


I Will Bury You In Time

by warmommy



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anonymity, Canon-Typical Violence, Dornish Reader, F/M, Loss of Virginity, Love Triangles, Minor Character Death, Poisoning, Reader-Insert, Secret Identity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2019-01-30 21:31:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 26,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12661812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warmommy/pseuds/warmommy
Summary: You're a somewhat terrified, somewhat repulsed, somewhat agitated young woman who appeared at Castle Black around the same time as Stannis Baratheon's army. No one knows who you really are. Yet. An experienced healer, you are tasked with the care of a prisoner. Although you grow closer to him and to a select few, you maintain your anonymity until a few raven scrolls bearing the seal of a Great House arrive, and then the damn begins to crack. You wade into deeper waters the more you discover about yourself, your family, and the reason your mother told you to flee.  Someone from your past comes for you, and there begins the true danger.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You can find this and a lot more at my tumblr, warmommy.tumblr.com!

 

You ignored the splitting pain in your head except to stop halfway down the corridor from your destination to press your palm against your forehead for temporary relief. The work at Castle Black never stopped, especially not since that horrific battle, certainly not since Maester Aemon's death, which, as it would happen, necessitated this vile task. It wasn't enough that Castle Black was your last refuge in a world gone mad, that you had to protect your own name and identity with your life, that you had to protect your body and spirit from the rapers that crawled through the place. No, your latest task, at the behest of the lovely mouth of Jon Snow, was to take over the care of the wildling prisoner.

You halted again just before the door that led to him. You couldn't understand WHY this man wasn't in the ice cells with the others. Jon Snow had been, as yet, unable to get anything out of him. The maester had been bound by oath to treat the wounds and illnesses of any man, friend or foe, but that oath was not your own. Nevertheless, here you stood, a small leather satchel in one hand, the other reaching out to knock softly on the door.

The response was not immediate. "You've got to be fuckin' kiddin' me."

With your head leaning heavily down to the floor, you let yourself in and closed the door with a click. "Jon Snow sent me to look at your wounds."

"You've got to be fuckin' kiddin' me."

"I shall thank you to hold your tongue and let me do my work so I may leave."

The wildling spoke no more, so you moved forth, holding your bag in front of you, and approached the corner of the room where the voice came from. You only glanced at him, but, even in the dark, noticed eyes of deep curiosity and amusement.  

You cleared your throat and lit the hanging candles above the table before taking instruments out of your bag and laying them on its surface. "I was told you have a great many injuries all over your body."

"And yet I kept going."

"That you did." You gestured towards one of the empty chairs. "I should thank you to remove your shirt to begin."

The wildling laughed softly, a low and rolling chuckle that danced its way up your spine and straightened out your shoulders. He stood, and seven hells, he was enormous. Taller than you by more than half a foot and twice as wide, he held out his chained hands.

You shook your head. "Pull the shirt off your shoulders and roll the sleeves down. I've no need of uncuffing you and no intention to do so, either. Sit down and remove the shirt enough so that I can do my work, or I'll leave you to rot in this room and Jon Snow can come and dress your wounds, himself."

In fairness, his hands were the first thing you examined once the both of you were seated. You held up each in turn, casting as much light upon them as you could, to be sure that his wrists were not turning blue from lack of blood flow.

"That isn't a wound," the wildling pointed out.

"I'm not like you," you snapped at him, turning his big hand over. His nails were too long. "I would not let a person lose the use of their hands entirely. The colour of your hands looks healthy. No bruising. I can see where you've cut your skin trying to get the irons off, though. Stupid."

He laughed again, which only served to further irritate you. He had trouble pulling his head out of his shirt, so you had to help, only to find it was a ruse, and he laughed at that, too.

Before you could scowl or rebuke him, you saw the sutures that had gone nasty and hissed, a sound of sympathy and concern that you did not owe a wildling. He noticed it too, you were sure, but he was careful to say nothing. He was an observer, you noted. Like some clever animal, he was watching you, trying to figure out what to expect and how to use it against you.

"Seven hells. . ." You ran your finger along the edge of the stitches where the skin was red, hot, and angry, and this time, the wildling jumped and hissed himself. Looking back to his face with disbelief, you held the inside of your wrist against his forehead. When you felt nothing, you bent down and held your lips there briefly. "You've got a fever."

"Did you just kiss me?" he asked, tilting his head like a curious pup.

"Not in the way you think, no, it was not a kiss. Lips are more sensitive than hands and wrists. It's how my mother checked for fever when I was a girl. It's slight, but you've got one. Lucky I got here when I did. If that hurt for me to touch, what I've got to do to treat it will be quite painful. I'm. . .sorry." You turned away to rinse your hands with distilled wine.

"You're  _sorry_?" He laughed.

You snapped the towel you dried your hands with angrily and hung it on his opposite shoulder. "Yes, I am sorry. Unlike you, I feel empathy for living creatures and make it my profession to ease pain and suffering."

"Even for a wildling?"

"Yes, even for a wildling with no apparent sense of decency--stop trying to antagonise me, you're too good at it. The point remains that this will be painful, and it's only the first wound of many for me to treat, and only the first time. They will not allow me to give you milk of the poppy. I am going to begin now. Perhaps you should brace yourself against the table."

It was slow, unpleasant work, and you found yourself even somewhat angry that his condition had been left to more or less rot. The stitches smelt terrible and his skin had begun to grow around them as they began to deteriorate and feed the infection. You stood behind him and used shears and tweezers to cut and pull away the fibres. You watched him carefully, how planes of muscle moved under skin, how his breath heaved. The table began to rattle under the force of his hold, so you relented and decided to give him a break from what could only be agony. You patted his uninjured side gently, and he slumped, his head over the table.

"They are half-gone," you said. "There is not as much puss as I thought there would be. You are lucky."

He gave a snide snicker. "So fucking lucky."

Choosing to ignore this, you looked at the back of his neck. In spite of the biting chill in the air, beads of sweat had begun to form, spiking the dark red hairs at the edge of his scalp. You watched your own hand move gently through dirty yet soft follicles, noticed his shiver at your touch, and froze solid.

You had lost count of all the revolting things men had said to you since leaving home, and especially since arriving at Castle Black. The brothers of the Night's Watch were no gentlemen and spared no crude words for you. With a bit of shock, it dawned on you that this wildling had said nothing untoward. Even now, when he had the chance to mock you, he chose not to. He was waiting, again. Observing carefully.

 

 

Before the end of the night, you decided it best to check on the wildling again. After speaking to Jon Snow about his treatment that day, the motives for keeping the wildling alive and safe became more clear. Snow had looked you dead in the eye and said, "I know you despise them, Rowna, but I need every bit of information you can get from him. I need him alive for that."

So, although it had not been specifically asked of you to return at this time, you did, carrying your satchel in one hand and clean water in another. As earlier, you knocked, and waited for him to give you permission to enter.

"Fancy seeing you again."

You tilted your head and squinted at him. "What are you doing?"

He looked up at you from below his eyebrows, then back to the long roll of parchment before him on the floor. He'd weighed one side with a melting candle on a stick and the other with his boot. As you came closer, he shrugged, going back to his work. "I'm bored."

Without permission this time, you walked around and knelt on both knees at the other side of the parchment. He'd been using his fingers, blackened with soot from the fireplace, to draw quite a detailed scene of dogs and tents and people working and smoky fires. The impact of this improvised art piece left you lost for words. It  _was_  art, and it had been a long time since you'd had the pleasure of seeing something so nice, so very  _real_ , in a sense. The lines seemed animated, conveying motion.

He seemed proud of it, almost, and pointed to this and that, designating this person as Ecken and that dog as Piret.

You tilted your head, lips pursed. "Who gave you paper?"

The wildling shrugged. "Why are you here?"

Pulled away from your trance, you pointed to the table where you'd left your things. "It's important to keep a constant check on that wound on your back and the one in your leg where Jon Snow shot you. I think your clothing caught most of the arrows before they could sink very far into your skin. That was lucky."

"No." He shook his head, letting go of the parchment so that it rolled itself up. "Why are you here? What do you gain by helping me?"

"Everyone at Castle Black earns their keep, and I am lucky, myself, to be alive." You helped him roll up the leg of his pants far enough for you to examine the damaged muscle there. It looked no worse, but you dipped a rag into the cool water and ran it gently over the wound, anyway. "In truth, I'm safer in this room than out of it, but for now I've got food to eat and a place to sleep, and I've got Gilly and the baby to keep me company."

"Who? Another woman?"

You nodded. "Aye. You probably know of her family. It's quite an. . .awful, horrible, unthinkable situation. Her father was her husband."

"Craster." The wildling held a grave look in his eyes. "That means you're friends with a wildling, then."

"She's hardly a wildling. More like an unfortunate, sweet soul caught in the worst of circumstances. I adore baby Sam. It's been so long since I've seen a baby, before him."

He made a sound of disbelief, a quiet scoff. "You're old enough to have children of your own."

Words tried to come gushing out of your mouth, truthful words, and you could not afford the truth. You simply nodded, shrugged, and went about checking his wounds and patching them as you went. He sensed something was amiss, you knew, and he tried a few times to get you to talk again, but you were out of the room he was held in as quickly as you could. On unsteady feet, you raced to the little room you shared with Gilly and little Sam, avoiding lewd comments and touches as you went.

 

 

On the second day, you went to him three times, morning, afternoon, and night. When you stepped outdoors for fresh air and moonlight, one of the brothers crowded you as he passed. His hand slipped over your rear, causing you to nearly run. On the third day, another man of the Night's Watch tried to pull you aside, tried to kiss you in the hall. You screamed and pushed him, only to have him insist you were hysterical when one of the good ones came bustling in.

When you unlocked the door, you were still visibly shaken. You jumped when you realised the large, angry wildling stood right before you.

"What happened?" He was turning his head, looking at you this way and that. The chains connecting his ankles jangled as he came closer.

You swallowed. "Nothing. You've got to go and sit. Your shoulder wound looked much better yesterday."

"I heard you scream." He didn't budge, not an inch, just kept on looking at you.

"Spiders frighten me." You pushed gently at his chest.

He scoffed, but turned to the table finally. "Liar."

 

 

Jon Snow pushed, and you felt no choice but to listen to his wishes. You took meals to the wildling, and, under command of King Stannis, sat down to eat with him. Snow encouraged you to indulge the wildling's curiosity, after you told him of the constant string of questions, so long as it did not betray the Night's Watch or King Stannis. After a week had passed, you woke, dressed warmly, and walked with purpose through the training yard, along the hallways, until you found Snow by himself. You'd had to ride to the top of the Wall, where the bastard took an early watch, but, aside from a fear of heights, it was just as well. He heard you approach, but didn't look away from whatever held his attention on the horizon.

"I think I know how to gain his trust a bit more."

He looked at you finally, squinting his eyes against the bright sunlight, intensified by the surrounding ice and snow. "Good morning, Rowna. What are you thinking on?"

You did not look down. You forced yourself not to look down. "I have not been to treat him yet this day, but I believe it would do him some good to be out of that room for ten minutes. It cannot hurt, can it? He is in chains, and he still needs me to treat the wounds. They heal, but slowly, and I think this is in part due to being captive. He's a wildling. They're used to open spaces and fresh air."

Jon Snow shrugged so much more easily than you'd thought he would. "I've already thought on this. Aye. But you won't be alone."

You bristled, narrowing your eyes. "I don't wish to be alone with him at any time. You think I am trying to assist him in escaping? All that I do, I do it because you and Stannis Baratheon compel me."

"No, that's not what I think." He left it at that.

In spite of yourself, you were cheery as you entered the wildling's improvised cell/chamber. You held a tray of ham and bread and kicked the door closed behind you. He was already sitting at the table, waiting, which, because he couldn't read, you found, often meant just staring off into space.

"Good morning," you greeted him. You set aside a few parchment rolls for him to sketch upon later and sat across from him, taking only a piece of bread. "I've some news that might make you happy."

"You are downright jolly. Did you throw a man off the top of the Wall?" He pushed a piece of ham at you again and again.

"Stop it! I do not eat pork." You pushed it back to him. "I do not delight in the thought of murder, unlike  _you_. No, I have arranged for you to come outside for a few minutes. I think it will be good for you."

The wildling laughed mirthlessly. "I'll never leave this room alive."

"You will, and soon. I am to check your wounds and then Snow will come and chain us together, very elaborately, I might add, so that I would probably fall and break my neck if you tried to escape--not that you'd care--and we will go outside and feel the sun and breathe in the air and that." When ham fell out of his hand and onto the table without him so much as taking another breath, your eyebrows raised. "It's only for ten minutes, but--"

"You did this?"

At a loss, you nodded momentarily.

"You did this for me? A wildling?"

"I did it for my patient," you smoothed it over, reaching for water. "There's paper for you, too. I didn't forget."

He simply went on staring, and you tried to pretend that he wasn't. He breathed slowly, watched you carefully. After a while, he reached across the table for your wrist. It didn't hurt. It wasn't meant to. He had your attention now, however, and, all at once, your heart began to beat so hard and so quickly that you were ashamed he may hear it. "What is your name?"

He had asked so many times, dozens of times per day. It wasn't a question that you could answer honestly, and you found yourself not wanting to lie. "It is not important who I am. I am just a healer. One day, I'll leave the Wall, just like you, and both of us will go on living as though we never met. There's no use in names."

The wildling leaned over the table, the intensity of his eyes increasing. All of the air seemed to rush from the windows. "That may be so," he said, his voice a low rumble. "But it will always be true that you have touched me and I have touched you. The fingerprints of another person never truly leave you. You break bread with a wildling, you talk with a wildling, you heal a wildling, you ask Jon Snow to let a wildling feel the sun on his face and the wind at his back. You are nothing you pretend to be."

"I cannot say," you whispered at last. "And if you are right, then it does not matter, because I have touched you, broken bread with you, talked to you, healed you, and asked Jon Snow to let you feel the sun on your face and the wind at your back."

He withdrew his hand from you slowly, brought it to touch his chest. "I am Tormund."


	2. Chapter 2

The chains between you rattled and jerked awkwardly. Tormund moved as a very large man, and you, being only a woman of average stature, were unused to this posturing. Every few days, Jon Snow chained your ankles together, Tormund's left wrist and your right wrist together, and every single time, Tormund forgot all about you in favour of the fresh breeze and rays of sunlight beaming down on him. He never even spoke, to you, to Snow, or to any passers-by. It was a short walk from the room he was kept in, and he was confined to only one single space at the edge of the courtyard, but he didn't complain. Not where anyone else could hear, anyway, and not much.

 

For the fourth time, you were summoned to come before King Stannis, and the news of the summons alone was enough to make your stomach turn. It was not supposed to be this way, you thought. When you started out, began your journey to Castle Black, none of this was supposed to happen. None of _these_  people were supposed to be there.

It was only him, this time. No Onion Knight, no queen, no Red Woman. King Stannis sat alone at his table, a chalice of wine in his hand, and he gestured for you to come closer. "What do you call hair of that colour?"

You paused in the middle of the room, kept your head down, and folded your hands before you. "I don't know, Your Grace. Quite a pale yellow, if I had to say."

"Quite a pale yellow," Stannis repeated. Without a hint of amusement, he turned back to the pages before him and took another sip of wine. "And your eyes. There can't be many violet-eyed beauties from Essos, can there? In fact, I should contend that those that are noble-born stay in Essos in their palaces of luxury and those lowborn are probably sold to whatever whorehouse pays their parents the highest amount."

Forcing yourself to breathe slowly, in, out, in, out, you waited. Saying nothing was always better than saying something, when people, even kings, made remarks about your possible origins. "If it please you, Your Grace, may I ask what you may require of me this day?"

"You may." He stood and tossed something, which you caught. "Left-handed. Interesting. That should be satisfactory.

You gulped. "For what, Your Grace?"

"That should be proper payment for your next duty. Go and seduce that wildling fellow." Stannis finished off his beverage and set the empty chalice on the table, never turning stormy eyes away from you. "He's never seen anything like you before, I should imagine. You've never groused about his attentions before."

You let the gold dragon coin fall between your fingers as though someone had spat on you. Your lips curled, your nostrils flared. You could not even breathe for a moment, but when you did, you stomped over the coin and slid it across the dusty stone floor. Your voice was tinted with raw emotion, powerful traitors of your carefully manicured demeanour. "They said you were better than your brother."

Stannis glanced at the coin, then up at you again. The barest trace of a smile touched his thin lips.

"'That wildling fellow' has _never_  laid his hands on me, has _never_  said a word about what he'd like to do to me or what he thinks my body is meant for, unlike many of the men I have come to know here. Unlike any of them, he has some decency and some decorum and some modicum of respect for a woman, regardless of what I look like or whether or not my mother and father sold my body when I was a girl." Chest heaving, you looked back to the door. "May I be excused, Your Grace?"

Stannis Baratheon was smirking, now. He walked calmly over to the table where he poured himself another cup of wine. "Do you know what sort of woman passes up a gold dragon in exchange for a few moments of time with her body?"

"A woman with _honour_?" you near-shouted.

" _Exactly_." His eyes never left you, never quit following your every tiny movement. "You are dismissed, Rowna of Essos."

You ran all the way to Tormund's room, keys jingling in your hand as you raced up the spiral stairs. Your hands fumbled and shook, causing you to drop the keys several times before you could finally get the door open. It wasn't strictly allowed, but you locked the door behind you, and, doing so, felt your knees give out from beneath you, and you slid down the ancient wood to the floor. Tormund was kneeling down before you a second later, and you realised with some shock that he'd been talking to you, was still talking to you, using the name he had made up for you.

"What's happened, Raya?"

Fear and panic pierced your skull. You held your hands up over your face and began to quiver. Warm tears passed beneath your palms, dripping down to your neck and dress. This was not possible. This was not supposed to happen. . .

Tormund gave up on trying to get you to talk, but there was some trepidation and worry crawling into his words and his actions.

What he assumed, you gathered, is that you had been raped by a 'crow'. The attack of the panic was too great to stop him from checking you over for injury; you were immobile. When he was done, Tormund pulled the chain between his wrists over your head and dragged you with him against a wooden support beam. He had you there, situated between his knees, leaned up against his front, and he just kept on talking, his words vicious now, promising retribution, promising vengeance, promising to pull the head off the crow that did it and let him fly over the Wall.

You shook your head suddenly and jerked away, though not under the circle formed by his chained hands. "No, not that. There was no. . ." You could not speak the words, and could not think of a gesture that was not lewd. "I didn't--it was not a r-rape." The last word came very quiet, very soft, and your cheeks grew hot.

"Oh." Tormund's lips remained parted, and he blinked at you. "Frightened me, Raya."

"I apologise," you said quickly. "It was not my intention, and I should not have come here, I do not even have my supplies--"

"Ssh, ssh, shut up." He hugged you now. A real hug. An embrace. Something you had not felt in a long while. "Don't worry, little Raya. Must've been something to make you this way. I want to know."

Of course, the whole truth was impossible. You sniffled, stray tears falling down upon tough grey furs, a medley of hurt and indignation trying to settle inside you, but even greater was the pure and unadulterated terror. Not only was Stannis suspicious. . .he was much, much more clever than his brothers had been.

"It was the king," you said after a while, unable to even mind that your head still rested on the body of a _wildling_. "How much does a window girl get paid?" Intelligent, curious blue-green eyes simply stared back at you. "Um. . .a _Sally_?" You whispered. "A _lady of the evening_?" Nothing. You sighed, though red burned like fire on your pale cheeks. He could not be blamed for terms he had no way of knowing. "A. . .a _whore_." The word hardly made a sound as it left your mouth.

Tormund tossed his head back against the wooden beam and laughed heartily, jostling you. You pursed your lips and waited angrily for him to stop, but he did not even seem to be slowing. His arms went slack, the chain rattling and settling somewhere in the middle of your back, and Tormund had turned red now, too. Just when you thought he would stop, a new bout of laughter shook him, coming to raspy coughs of exertion, and he embraced you again.

"Oh, Raya." Although you scrambled, pouting, he held you fast. He sniffled, the roaring mirth having brought a tear to the corner of his eye. "Ah, Raya, you fuckin' little sweetheart of a woman. Say whore again! Say it!"

"You black heart!" You dug your elbow into his rib. "King Stannis tried to pay me to--with you!"

"Oh, you've got to ruin it every time I have something to laugh about, haven't you? Aye, aye!" He winced. "You've got sharp elbows. You can keep the money he gave you. I won't tell him you didn't. I can muss your hair for you, if you like."

He was trying to make you feel _better_ , you realised. With that, you sank back down against the one who had become perhaps your closest friend in a very short period of time. "You might be the only man, except for Jon Snow, and Samwell, of course, that has not treated me in like fashion since I have come to Castle Black. There are those that do not know how to keep their mitts to themselves, and others still that so brashly utter such crude words, and now the king has tried to. . .to rent out my _body_  for his purposes."

"You really sound miserable."

You sighed quite loudly. "You are the one in chains."

"Aye, that may be, but that cunt Stannis would never suggest such a thing to a lad."

"His brother was the one who went with lads." You leaned back suddenly. "Do it."

Tormund tilted his head. "Do what?"

You licked your lips and pointed your eyes to the ground. "Stannis asked me if I knew what kind of woman would pass up gold to lie with a man, and I said a woman with honour, and he said exactly. He's very cunning and he was trying to sniff me out. A lowborn girl couldn't afford to pass up gold. . ." You cut yourself off, sitting up straighter. "Do you want to help me, or not?"

He nodded once. "What would you have me do, Raya?"

You crossed your arms before yourself. There was no other way, none that you could think, to throw Stannis off your scent. Not after the way you had revealed so much of yourself to him, with so little effort on his part. "I cannot have him thinking I'm some noble girl."

"You are, though."

Like the strike of a viper, your hand lashed out to cover his lips, and you gazed deep into his eyes, your heart pounding. "Never say that again, please, Tormund. If you want to help me, if you want me to live, you will never utter those words again, and you will not ask me my name, and you will. . .just tell anyone who'll listen. . .that I came to you, and I. . ."

His shoulders sunk. "Do you know what every last crow will say to you? Do you know what they'll try to do to you?"

"He cannot continue down this path." You blinked your watery eyes. "Let them call me what they will. They do not respect me now. Verbal abuse is better than dying."

"But _why_  will you die?" His voice was near a whisper, his dark red eyebrows knitting together. "I will help you, but if you'll tell me, there may be a better way."

"I've never asked for your trust before, just as you've never asked for mine. I promise you, whatever I can do for you, I will do it, if you. . ."

"What you ask is nothing from me." He shrugged. "Let the crows think a beautiful woman would rather have me than them? It will drive them mad, and I hate them. You are the one who must bear the burden."

"And I am willing, as I have told you." You took his hands and squeezed them in yours. "Please. Tell me what I may do for you, in return."

Tormund drew a long breath and let it out slow, looking right past you. "Stand up, Raya. Don't be afraid."

Regardless of what he said, all your nerves were lit when you followed his directions. He stood behind you, and his chained hands pushed you gently at the small of your back until the entire front of your body pressed against the door.

"Don't be afraid," he said again. You still jumped, petrified, when he began to make noise. It was mortifying, but precisely what you'd asked him to do--anyone within earshot would have no doubt as to what you wanted them to believe was happening. He whispered instructions. _Run your nails down the boards, Raya_. _Make a noise--yes, like that_.

Your blood began to flow, _so_  much faster, and you were not afraid. In spite of the terrible humiliation, you knew, now, that there was no man at Castle Black you could trust like Tormund. After you'd spent so long insulting him. . .After all the terrible things you had said to him, about his people, a people that you had hardly ever heard of until you'd sailed across the sea. . .

You gasped, feeling as though something inside had gripped hold of you and pulled you down. "Tormund. . ."

Something hitched. He froze full-body behind you, then growled a harsh breath and hooked his hand around your waist. A sound escaped your mouth, natural, this time. His whole body pressed against yours. For a moment. He pulled away entirely, and when you looked back at him, you could not place the expression he wore. His breathing was rough and laboured, his skin was flushed, and his face caught someplace between laughter and. . .intensity.

He held his hand out to keep you away. "You've got to go. Now. But before you do, there someone I need you to see for me, and time's running out."

You felt eyes all over you when you emerged into daylight, but the tugging, warm feeling inside you hadn't left, and you didn't care about the jeering and harsh whispers. You prayed to find your room empty and, when you did, jammed the door closed behind yourself and exhaled. You would be unsurprised to see your own reflection as maroon, and as your thighs throbbed, your body remembered every pass of Tormund's fingers over your clothed skin. Something had changed when you just _happened_  to say his name. . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

 

After you and Tormund had pretended to be lovers a second time, the boy, Olly, acting as page to King Stannis, had come to the bedroom you shared with Gilly and baby Sam. Wordlessly, he passed two gold dragons into your hand, and slammed your door shut in your face. Gilly gasped and tsked.

 

"That little beast," she said. "I ought to box his ears. . ."

 

You just kept staring down at the gold in your hand.

 

Gilly looked at it, then up at your eyes. "It's not true. I know that it isn't true."

 

"But you  _have_  heard." Your voice was weak, as was your spirit. Tormund had been absolutely correct. The treatment was worse than you had imagined it could be. You sat at the edge of the bed you and Gilly shared. After a moment, you handed the coins over to her. Her sweet eyes grew wider than usual, and she gasped again.

 

"What are you doing?" She rocked baby Sam in her arms. 

 

"Take this." You shook together the coins in your palm.

 

Gilly shook her head slowly. "I've never even seen that much gold in one place, before. That's your money."

 

"And you know that I did not earn it," you snapped, then slumped. "I apologise. This has been difficult for me. Please, take this. Sew it inside his swaddling to hide it. If something happens and you need to get away, you will have money for enough food and room at an inn to at least figure out what to do next. I want you to have it."

 

"You really  _are_  a rich girl," Gilly said softly.

 

"Promise me you won't tell anyone. Not even Sam, Gilly. I'll keep giving you every coin Stannis sends to me if you keep your mouth shut."

 

"You haven't got to," she insisted, slipping the gold pieces into her pocket. "But Rowna, why have you done this? You did not even want to give him treatment, and now you're being paid to sleep with him."

 

"I'm not!"

 

"Well, you know what I mean! That's what people believe, and it's why Stannis is paying you. I'm your friend, tell me why. It really  _sounds_  like you slept with him. . ."

 

You shook your head, taking it in your hands. "I've never lain with a man. It is better that everyone thinks  _this_  of me than they know the truth. The more distance I can put between myself, Stannis Baratheon, and the truth, the better off we will all be."

 

Gilly sat beside you on the bed. "But. . .it  _sounds_  like. . .I heard myself. If you aren't doing that with him, what  _are_  you doing?"

 

"Tormund tells me how to act, and I do it as loud as I can make myself. It's the most ridiculous, humiliating thing. It's hard to even look at him after, and he always makes me leave."

 

Her eyes practically popped. "Oh!"

 

You frowned. "What?"

 

"Well, he--he  _is_  a man, and you  _are_  very pretty. I've never even seen anybody who looks like you before. It can't be easy for him to just pretend. That's why he has to be alone."

 

"What are you talking about, Gilly?"

 

She widened her eyes once more and dipped her chin demonstratively. "Rowna, do you know the difference between boys and girls?"

 

"Oh, gods!" You stood and began to pace the room, crushed under the weight of your own shame. Your hands shook, your voice shook. "Oh, sweet gods, Gilly, no! Oh, this just gets worse and worse! How am I supposed to face him again?"

 

Gilly laughed quietly. "All of them do it. Girls do, too. You're just a good girl. And that Giantsbane boy, he's very nice not to say anything about it, to have you to leave. He must know how shy you are."

 

"He's not a boy." You sat in the chair in the corner, the one where you took turns rocking little Sam. Sad that that was her definition of nice. "But I suppose he is a very good man, and he is nice to me. He doesn't have to be. He's so big, and he's been left alone with me all this time--he could have murdered me the minute he met me."

 

"Do you like him?" Gilly lowered her voice as she carefully placed Sam in his cradle. Following that, she moved to help you out of your clothes so that you could sleep. 

 

"Yes. And I should be nicer to him, too."

 

She nudged you. "Not just like him. Do you like him like me and big Sam like each other?"

 

Again your face burned, and again you groaned. "Let's not talk about him anymore, please. I have to go and face him at breakfast tomorrow, and I'm already mortified."

* * *

 

You felt like crying and dying, both, as you ascended the stairs with a tray of food in your hands. You knelt to lower it to the ground and unlock the door, then picked it up and stood, thinking to knock before actually opening it. 

 

"You've  _got_  to be fuckin' kiddin' me."

 

You frowned as you entered. "And you speak so rudely."

 

He countered with a grin, but it was not so cool as it had been in times past. You were forced to spend so much time in his company that, even in little more than a week, you recognised the edge of nerves in him. Knowing that he was nervous or something similar made it easier for you to relax, and so you sat across from him at the table, where he already was, and gave him the food. He narrowed his eyes when he saw that you reached for none yourself. He pointed at the bread.

 

"No." You shook your head. "I have no appetite at the moment."

 

"Eat it or I'll make you eat it."

 

You snatched it from the tray and pulled it in half, tossing the other bit at him. He caught it and brought it to his mouth in one fluid motion. 

 

"Listen princess," he said with his mouth full, "I tried to tell you it was a shitty plan and you would not listen. No matter how shitty they are to you, you still have to eat." He began to choke and cough, so you walked around and started to beat rhythmically against his back.

 

"How can you be so. . .so  _casual_ , so  _nonchalant_?" You pinched his earlobe hard when his throat was clear. " _That’s_  what you get for chewing with your lips flapping like an animal!"

 

In another swift, fluid motion, Tormund wrapped his arm around your waist before you could make it back to your chair and pulled you into his lap. You gaped down at the length of chain binding his wrists, and he winked at you, laughing his low, rumbly laugh at his own joke. "Somehow I think you would prefer that I acted casual."

 

Whatever retort he expected, all he got was your open-mouthed stare. You could not bring yourself to move, no matter how hot your face grew, no matter how many strangled, thudding heartbeats passed. He frowned after several moments whiled away and pressed his wrist up to your forehead. Barring that, he kissed you there.

 

"You don't have a fever," he remarked. "What's wrong with you?"

 

You wanted to speak, to move, to do anything, but all the blood had left your face and rushed down between your legs. Within a moment, you brought your hand to his face and felt the coarse hairs of his vibrant beard beneath your palm. Slowly, you became aware of your breathing, of his breathing, how they did not match in pace, but how they had both grown ragged. Though you had been studying his face, looking for whatever it was that had  _changed_  so drastically, you had not yet focused on his eyes.

 

When you did, there was the same intelligence, the same curiosity, but unsteady. You were watching him and he was watching you right back. He hadn't meant for this to happen, and you could read it, plain as if he had written the message in his own eyes, but. . .he didn't want for you to move away, either. You could see that evidently expressed, too. He'd meant nothing of it, but now. . .

 

He was waiting for you. You prayed for an interruption. For a knock on the door. For someone to come bursting in. For the horns. All you got, however, was your rabbit heart, and Tormund reaching slowly, showing you that he was no threat, toward your neck, to feel how quickly your pulse raced now. In turn, you touched the other side of his face, as well. At any moment, you felt like your heart would simply burst. You could live and die a thousand lifetimes inside these minutes.

 

Tormund took a lock of your silvery blonde hair between his thumb and forefinger and tugged gently, as he had a hundred times before. Your quiet laughter hung between the two of you, a smile on your lips breaking the surface tension. His eyes only grew wider, however, his pupils blown. You giggled more and rested your elbow on his shoulder, bringing yourself closer, one hand still on his cheek, but he did not smile, did not speak. His lips parted, but no sound emerged.

 

"What is it?" Your brows raised, a crease forming between them.

 

He began shaking his head and did not stop for several seconds. "I don't know what to do," he admitted softly. "I can't fuckin' think. I never saw something so beautiful as  _that_  smile, just now. Like a goddess."

 

You smiled anew, and blushed. "I only look like part of the walls, here. I used to spend my days in the sun, wearing only very light fabrics of all different colours. I'm so cold, Tormund."

 

"You're gonna be the best thing or the worst thing of my days, I cannot tell yet." His eyes were still wide and earnest. "I don't really fuckin' care right now."

 

"Quite possibly the worst." You smiled anyway. It was lovely to smile again. To be called beautiful. To have the complete and undivided attention of a man who ripped others asunder. 

 

Tormund shook his head again. "No."

 

At least he did not  _want_  to believe it.

 

"Tormund?"

 

"Hn?" His response was almost utterly absent.

 

"I do not know what to do, either. I lack. . .knowledge."

 

He tilted his head toward yours, eyebrows leaping up.

 

You swallowed. "If you could, I. . ."

 

The next few seconds were a startling whirlwind. He swept the contents of the table off onto the floor and sat you down upon the surface. Tormund was on you faster than you could register, one hand in your curls, the other bracing his weight above you. Still, he took no liberties, did not push your back against the wood or slide his hand beneath your skirts. Winding your arm around his neck, you drew him in. Then your lips touched.

 

For so, so long your only purpose in life had been the endless series of trials and tribulations that led you to this godsforsaken Wall of ice and stone. Before the night your mother came to you and told you to flee, to fly away from your home and godspeed, there had been lessons, music, sweltering sun, dancing, your family, the scent of jasmine, the bright flash of steel in your hand, the shimmer of the ocean. . .so many beautiful things.

 

You wanted, more than anything, to bring Tormund back with you, and show him every last wonderful detail. Breathlessly, smiling, your noses touching, feeling the heat of his skin, you made your request. "Come away with me." He grew still, and you could feel him start to pull away, but you held him fast, your eyelashes fluttering against his cheek. "Come away with me, in the night."

 

He chuckled at the fancy, his hands coming down to the sways in each side of your hips. "And where would we go, Raya?"

 

"Home."

 

"And how would we get there?"

 

"A ship," you whispered in his ear, then kissed it, an afterthought. "The fastest ship in Stannis Baratheon's fleet. The  _Shireen._  Have you ever sailed before? Been on the water?"

 

He laughed again. "Not on any ship, that's for fuckin' sure."

 

"I thought I was a mermaid when I was a girl." You gasped with pleasure when he kissed your eyelids. His lips moved down along your cheekbones, your jaw, touched your throat. . .You held on tightly. "I swam beneath the waves, and my. . .my f-father, he started shedding his armour, shouting for someone to save me, but I was already floating on my back, looking towards the sun and the clouds. . ."

 

Tormund pulled you up to sit, then to stand. You understood all at once something brilliant and horrible all the same, that you were gazing upon your own heart. It moved away from you as he backed away, and you remembered the chains that bound it when you heard them moving. You looked down at his wrists, at his ankles, and trembled. 

 

"Little mermaid," his low voice interrupted you. His fingers brushed against your cheek. "You've got to run. You gotta go. Go, go, go. But come back. Swim my way again."

 

"Everything changed when I walked in here," you remarked, astounded still.

 

"Aye, but it all changed when you walked in here the first time." He let go of you, and you started walking. Once you locked the door, you smirked and turned down the corridor, where you had been warned not to go near.

 

Being called a whore and treated like a night-walker did not frighten you as much, in this new armour, and you held your head high. No one wanted to wait outside for you now.


	4. Chapter 4

 

 

You stopped before an unmarked, ordinary door, but you knew. Looking over your shoulder, you rapped twice quickly, and received two quick knocks in return. You turned the key and let yourself inside. He stood about the centre of the room, haggard, older, but with such a  _presence_. You closed and locked the door without ever looking away from him.

"Well, I'll be damned." Mance Rayder held out his hand to shake, his left. "What in blazes are you doing with Tormund?"

"At least there's no need to introduce myself." You smiled, and the two of you braced arms.

"You are Rowna of Essos, and Stannis has been waiting for you to come here." His eyes were so sharp, but he had a pleasant smile and demeanour. "They tell me you went from hating wildlings to fucking one inside a week's time."

"I never had a reason to hate wildlings," you admitted. "And I have never lain with him or any man."

"A good man or woman can call their own mistakes for what they are." Mance shrugged, but kept up his warm grin and gestured for you to sit down. "It would not sway me one way or the other, except perhaps that he's, well, Tormund."

"You're old mates, right?"

"Oh, aye. It's why I get to talk low of him. I don't mean it. If Tormund had you, you'd both be lucky for it. Never a finer lad. Well, I suppose he's a bit old for me to call him that, now. He's always had that look in his eye. 'Fuck the world, here I come'. Saw it the first time when he was fourteen, looking up at the Wall like it was his to conquer." Mance was still smiling, but he tilted his head at you strangely. "And I bet you're just as dangerous as he is."

You folded your arms in front of you and leaned over them. "I am."

"They told me he was the last man standing after the battle."

"He was, according to all that I've heard. It was Maester Aemon Targaryen that patched him up first, though. Jon Snow told me that Tormund came running up, arrows sticking out of him all angles, still swinging his sword. Jon told him to let it end, and Tormund says to him, 'This is how a man ends'."

Mance laughed, the lines around his eyes deep from years of times both good and bad. He quieted fast, though, and leaned back, gazing out the window. "The last time I saw someone come up to me with so many secrets hanging 'round their neck, Jon Snow was telling me how he wanted to fight against the dead. I wagered on him and lost."

"You didn't. You only lost because of Stannis."

"Doesn't sound like you are a fan of his."

"I am not."

"Not much of a fan of anyone who knows you've got something hidden. 'Specially not when they see just how big it is." Mance turned to you again. "Tormund's girls wound up in Essos."

There it was again. The gripping fear and panic. You did not feel yourself touch your lip. "W-what?"

"Twin daughters. Born when he was eighteen. He loved 'em. Loved 'em so much, he jumped on the chance to board them on a ship bound for a safer place, few years ago."

"No." You looked up at the ceiling and carefully wiped the tears that came running down.

"I thought I was going to take that to my grave."

"You--you never  _told_  him? How do you know?"

"He knows." Mance looked down at his aging hands. "It was just a mistake. Slavers from Astapor or Volantis, one, more than willing to take advantage of a bunch of wildlings looking to get out, save their children."

"How old are they?"

"That old, now." He passed you a handkerchief. "They called me Old Grandpa. Grandpa wasn't enough, they had to throw in the old bit. Munda and Torra. And he loved 'em."

"Of course he did." You blinked, running the handkerchief just under your eye. "That is the most dreadful, hideous thing I have ever heard in my life." You startled when his hand landed on your shoulder, not having seen it coming.

"Your eyes started watering soon as I mentioned them. That's a big heart you're carrying around. People don't normally realise that some of the most deadly among them have diamonds for hearts. Tormund does, underneath all that tar and coal. Yours is just there on your sleeve."

"I'll find them." You wiped your eyes again. "I swear it on the Seven."

"You'll shed more than just tears for them, one day." Mance cracked another grin, his eyes still great and sad. "And girl, you are absolutely not from Essos."

You shook your head, ready to disavow that horrid patch of sand and nothing. "No. That's true. And you will not tell a soul."

"No, I will not."

Through trembling lips and gritted teeth, you went on. "I will take them back, and I will make the slavers  _pay_  in blood."

"And a fine mother you will make." Mance pursed his lips in regarding you. "That fire you feel? Never let it go. Now. What can I do for you?"

"He only asked me to come see you." You forced your face and body to straighten and held in your fist the handkerchief Mance let you borrow. You blinked, letting your mind centre, then looked up at him again. "He gave no message, no further instruction. I think perhaps he just wanted to hear of you one more time."

"If you know what Jon Snow is planning, now would be the time."

You swallowed. "I do not know him personally. Just who he is. He wanted me to encourage Tormund to talk to me. Tormund almost never stops talking, but the gods do know nothing he says is of any use."

"Bah." Mance shook his head. "You would not say."

"I wouldn't. I care for him. That's why I'm here."

The King Beyond the Wall sat back in his chair, gazing out the window once more. "Sing me a song, mysterious woman of Essos."

"I'm from Dorne," you said.

He rolled his eyes. "Then sing me a Dornish song. Cor."

* * *

 

Good men didn't deserve to die. Stannis Baratheon was not a good man, and he lived, he walked, he breathed. Your cloak fluttered behind you as you walked, barreling through anyone who stood between you and the shooting range. Someone dared to sneer, and you threw your elbow to his belly and kept on. Father was a good man, and now dead.

You picked up one of the piss-poor bows and nocked three arrows. You fired one.

Ned Stark was an honourable man, and what did he get for it? His head on a spike in King's Landing.

Your second arrow came close to splitting the first, but not quite. Father had never managed to teach you that particular trick. You released the last, right on the target, and approached the straw-stuffed dummy. Someone had painted Xs for eyes on the thing. You scoffed, returned to your original position, nocked the three of them at once, and fired one by one.

' _Patience_.' You could practically hear Father's voice--oh, what you wouldn't give for that, just once more. Just to have him standing behind you, criticising everything, every move.

"Hey. Hey.  _Hey_." Someone poked the back of your shoulder. Edd Tollett backed up a step, holding up peaceable hands. "Don't worry about it, with speed and accuracy like that, you'd have me dead on the ground before I could even reach you."

"That's right." You dropped your sneer, though, and lowered your weapon. "How may I help you?"

"Are you joking? It's not often you see a spectacle like that, and you bein' a girl and all. Show us how it's done."

You looked back again, saw the few other brothers gathered, one being Sam, who gave you a kind smile and a wave. "Hmph." You grabbed a longer bow and three more arrows. "I'll show you a girl."

* * *

 

Saying that you cared for Tormund, even to a man sentenced to death, who had no need or reason to repeat the words to anyone else, still stirred up confusion within you. Your skin felt frozen. You had not felt warm, truly warm, since you'd arrived at this miserable place. You tucked your cloak around you, tired from the exercises in the range, and found a place where you could hide out and be alone a while.

Was it wise to tell Tormund? He would probably think you'd gone mad. It was only a kiss. You cursed yourself softly under your breath. Just a kiss. A meaningless thing. Your heart disagreed, but your mind at least wanted to stay strong. The last thing Mance had said before your leaving was that Tormund was next. The thought strangled you, as did the thoughts of his never-before-mentioned daughters rotting away in a brothel somewhere. Torra and Munda.

When the sun began to set, you sighed to yourself and started for the kitchens. It was by order of King Stannis that if you did not bring Tormund his meals, the man simply would not be fed. As your heart and mind battled it out, between the desire to see him again and the desire to flee, you filled a tray with enough for two and set toward the tower where he was chambered. You even knocked more softly than usual, and entered the room with red on your cheeks.

"Raya!"

You smiled sheepishly, but still couldn't garner the gumption to look at him.

"Like hell," he muttered, and took the tray away from you. It clattered down on the table and he pulled you forth by both hands until your head fit underneath his chin. "You're not gonna do that."

Here, there was  _comfort_. Without giving it much thought, or any, you closed your eyes, hummed, and let your head fall forth to rest on him. "Do what?"

"Start to walk backwards. You've got me. Understand?"

"I'm going to wash these furs."

"Raya."

"What? Is it not the perfect excuse to remove those chains?"

Tormund tilted his head. "So casual, she is. So nonchalant."

You nudged his arm. "You'll balk at freedom for the sake of a laugh?"

"Temporary freedom. If that." He smiled, though, and kissed the top of your head. "You take these chains off, I'm not sure what my hands will do."

"I am  _quite_  sure what they will not do." You winked at him and removed to the door. "Let me lock up. I have much to tell you, and I want to see your hands and feet unbound before I speak on it."

"Come on, let me chase you around the room."

You looked at him over your shoulder and rolled your soft, violet eyes. "Is that the wildling way?"

When the irons clattered down to the stone floor, Tormund stared down at his hands, rubbed his wrists. "I knew that you would do this when you told me you were sorry about my wounds hurting. You're much too sweet for a wildling girl."

With your hand on your hip, you smirked at him. "I can kill a man at five paces. Over a hundred, by arrow."

"That just gets me hard."

You gasped so loudly that it was comical, your hand flying up to cover your mouth, and he eventually fell to the floor, laughing at your expense. Your heart hammered against your breastbone and you gave a huge growl of frustration and knelt down beside him, boxing his arms. "You are dreadful! Simply dreadful! How can you say such a thing?"

Gods, he was breathtaking. So free, such a lovely grin, the most expressive, devil-may-care eyes. Even his stupid laughter was music to your soul.

Tormund always recognised an opportunity to catch you off-guard, and used this particular occasion to pull you down on top of him. Nothing bad, as ever. Just wanting to be close.

"Forgive me, Raya." He kissed your forehead. "You wouldn't let me chase you about, after all."

Your face hovered above his. You touched his lower lip lightly. "You are lucky to be so beautiful, or I would never put up with your follies."

A dark, low chuckle. A hand running from your shoulder down to your lower back. "Gingers are beautiful. We are kissed by fire."

"Kissed by fire." You closed your eyes, helpless against your smile.

"Tell me your name," he commanded softly.

You took one of his scarred, freckled hands in yours. "Raya." You kissed each of his knuckles. "Raya of Castle Black."


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I wrote the poetry, do not take. The beginnings of truth begin to unravel.

 

The next morning, you awoke, washed, brushed Gilly's hair for her while she fed baby Sam, told her about meeting the wildling king as she braided your hair into a fishtail to hang over your shoulder, held up your skirts to keep them from being dirtied by the filthy slush out in the yard, gathered breakfast, dealt with a  _very_  disagreeable wildling (he was no morning lark), pretended to have relations, and were ejected from the room. Smoothing your skirts and going over this list, a cast of blush to your cheeks just knowing what Tormund was up to behind that door, you considered yourself far too busy, and that you needed time alone again.

You suspected the reason for his especially irritable disposition on this morning had something to do with his shoulder wound, which  _still_  just refused to lose the last vestiges of infection. Your empathy washed away the lingering frustration you'd felt, and you made a quick decision to return to examine the wound again after, say, an hour. That was. . .enough, wasn't it?

Your feet carried you swiftly to the Maester's Tower, to which you had been granted access after the passing of Aemon Targaryen. You were the principle healer of Castle Black until such a time as a new maester could be appointed or acquired, much to the chagrin of Ser Alliser Thorne, Ser Janos Slynt, and quite a few others. No matter. They  _needed_  you, and that meant you had access to the herbs and balms and ointments and poultices and an enormous repository of information.

You wiped a few tears from your eyes upon unlocking and entering Maester Aemon's laboratory. You had known him for such a short time, but he was the one who authorised your entry to Castle Black, when you had fully expected that Jon Snow would do so, would be willing to  _listen_. You looked around the dusty place, and felt more at home than you had in other places in Castle Black. You imagined seeing Maester Aemon shuffling about, reaching for this and that. You imagined him as a younger man, stronger, his vision still with him, reading line after line after line. He had been  _kind_.

After such a long, perilous journey and being so resolutely pushed aside by the one person you had traveled so very far to see, to meet, to know, you remembered being brought to this tower, sitting in that chair, weeping into your handkerchief, and kind Maester Aemon's words. "I can feel that you came here with purpose, though I have no mind for what one could possibly want to do in this freezing fortress! Worry not, poor dear, none shall turn you away. I feel, too, that, whatever you came here for, one day, it will come for you."

You had not cried for Jon Snow since. Perhaps it was not such a good thing that so much of your time was to be invested in the care of Tormund, even for the sake of espionage, which you still had no intention to engage in. Jon did not even look your way, now, not when he did not need to. All this way, just for him, and it had all come to naught. So far.

If eighty percent of your time was allotted to Tormund, there was nothing you could do for it, not now. You found a brittle, woven basket and walked around the organised chaos of the tower, picking up this and that. What had Stannis said to you when you delivered your last 'report'?

_I’ll be quite disappointed if he manages to whelp a hairy bastard into you before you come up with the position of the remaining wildlings. You’ve already lowered yourself. Give him what he wants._

The insults were endless, and, truly, more of a weight on your heart and soul than you allowed for even Gilly to see. Your sheltered childhood and strictly proper upbringing dictated that you remain an innocent until you enter your marriage bed--and you had remained pure and innocent. All those around you saw you as tainted, though, and it was painful and humiliating. Necessary, though. You paused in space where you stood, allowing your saddened eyes to stare off for a moment. Had you not earned it? In order to survive, you had already given up your home, your titles, your future--and now your reputation, although your identity was yet unknown.

All of it was just. . .a mess, really.

The loud flapping of wings met your ears and startled you. You turned and saw a great raven standing upon the desk set by the window. The intelligent creature stared at you, and tilted its head. You were not the raven master of Castle Black, but you had been around the birds enough times to know what to do. You looked to your left and right and saw the clear jar containing bird feed, scooped some up in your hand, and held it out cautiously, fearing the thing's beak.

The raven picked once or twice at the mix of seeds in your hand, then flapped his great wings once more and landed on your wrist. You gasped, spooked again as the bird spread its taloned feet across your forearm and continued his dining experience. The distress faded and you smiled, wishing you could pet him.

The scroll caught your eye then, and you took it from the messenger animal and moved to set it with a few others that set unopened on the desk, but your hand froze when, in the light cast through the window, you saw the sun and spear seal upon the wax. It caused you such instant fright and trepidation that your whole body shook, as if chilled by a phantom wind, and the raven gave a great trilling sound and made his exit. Then, you noticed more. Four more, laid upon the table, unopened. Their seals had not been broken.

You felt faint. No one from Dorne had any reason to send communications to Castle Black; there had not been a Dornishman on the Wall in decades, perhaps centuries, just from a logistical standpoint. It was far more cost-effective to send men to Ghaston Grey than across thousands of miles to what most of the Dornish considered a place entirely inhospitable and too cruel for longterm punishments. Checking to be sure that you were alone, completely alone, you quickly tucked the scrolls inside of your dress, hauled the basket over your arm, and took flight. There was only one place at Castle Black safe enough for you to read this message, and you had the perfect excuse to go back there.

You fumbled with the lock, both of your hands trembling, and did not remember to knock. "Tormund, I have to. . ."

Sitting across the table from Tormund in your usual seat was Jon Snow, bedecked in black. You could not discern his thoughts or feelings by his expression, and he stood, walking towards you, locked the door, and reached for your basket to take. "I have to speak to you. Both of you."

For your own life, you could not think of a suitable reason to have him leave. "Jon." You tried to take his elbow in your hand, but one of the paper scrolls shoved up your sleeve unwedged itself and fell audibly to the floor. Loosened, each of the four others followed. Both you and Jon were staring at the pile of five scrolls, you in horror, him in righteous indignation.

"What's the meaning of this?" He shoved you back hard enough for you to yelp and fall backwards against the door.

"Don't you fuckin' touch her again," Tormund roared, the very vision of a beast in chains, of a murderous animal pacing back and forth in its confinement.

Nostrils flaring, Jon eyed you and bent down to pick up one of the scrolls.

"Don't," you begged, and you wept. You tried reaching for him again, but he pulled away. "Jon,  _please_."

He broke the seal, pulled the paper open, and began to read. Lines creased his forehead. 

"The scent of honeysuckle and morning dew clings to your skin,  
Making each breath a beauty,  
Every exhalation that I love you,  
Because I love you,  
As sweet upon my tongue as the words themselves.

You are the fruit my lips desire,  
The sweet and tacky juice of which drips on my chin,  
And I hear your timid laughter,  
The sound of seashells and mountain winds,  
The virgin who trembles in my bed.

I am a man who eats of fruits and flowers.  
I am a man who tastes of your mouth  
And set aside my spear so that my hungry arms may claim you.  
I am a man who has killed a thousand men  
And still strokes your eyes, your hair, the pearl of your face.

I will teach you, my flower, my sweet and nourishing pear,  
What it is to pray to an altar of flesh,  
To sip of my lips as wine, beloved one,  
To give of your body as you take of mine,  
How the gods do surrender their voices when they hear yours."

The room was a vacuum of silence, and there was no air. You could not fill your lungs. Jon eyed you with some disgust, some disbelief, and picked up another. 

"Do you feel it, my blushing desert rose?  
Every line, every stanza, every word  
I write for you, beloved star,  
Is meant only to make you feel, between your legs,  
The ocean rush of carnal pleasure that I will give to you each night.

There are no lands between us, only a whisper.  
There are no seas separating us, only a whimper.  
I wish to see the dark shadow of my being  
Imposed upon the precious light that is your soul.  
You lie in repose, and I taste of the lotus flower."

You did not see this, but heard the chains binding Tormund clattering, growing nearer to listen.

Jon plucked up another, but you rushed forth and closed your fist around it.

"Enough. That is enough. You have seen and read enough."

"What's going on?" Tormund was looking at the two opened scrolls that hung over Jon's arm. "Who wrote that? Is it from one of your books? You should not read those things aloud before her, Snow. Look at her. She is burning red."

Jon's eyes remained honed on yours. "They are  _for_  her,  _about_  her."

A split second later, Jon was on the ground, Tormund's big fist hanging in the air from where he'd hit him. He roared, a great rumble, and settled down on his knees, barreling his fists against Jon Snow's face.

"No! Tormund, you'll kill him, stop!" You pulled on your would-be lover's shoulders. "Tormund, guards will come, you must stop!"

"You've got to be fuckin' kiddin' me!" Tormund winced as Jon kneed his stomach. "After what he's  _said_  about you? I know you southron cunts think the rest of us are stupid, but I know damn well what he was talking about. Do you?"

"Yes, I--"

"He was talking about his tongue on your pussy!"

"No,  _he_  was  _not_." You pulled and tried with all your might to haul him away from Jon Snow. "Please, listen to me."

"He was talking about making a woman of you!"

"Tormund, he did not! He did not write those poems, he is my  _brother_!"

Both men quit their battling and stared up to where you stood.

You wiped your eyes and knelt down to examine Jon's face. "Tormund, move aside. You could have killed him."

Jon shoved you away again, this time straight against Tormund. He scrambled to his feet, spat blood onto the floor, and lifted up one of the unbroken seals. "Explain. Explain everything you just said, or he burns with Mance Rayder. Explain who of  _House Martell_  would be sending these to you? It doesn't have an addressee, but these sure as fuckin' hells aren't for Ser Alliser. Don't you dare lie to me again, Rowna, and don't you  _dare_  lie to me about my family again!"

"Rowna?" Tormund looked to you. Realisation was creeping into his features. "Your name is Rowna?"

You closed your eyes tightly and shook your head. You collected the scrolls, all of them. "No, it isn't Rowna, either. Jon, I swear to you on the Seven, this is no lie. Have you not wondered why I am  _here_?"

Jon looked ready to throttle you, but Tormund shot him a look of death and tightened his arm across your belly. "She won't be able to stop me the next time, boy. Think hard before you try and touch her again."

"You think she’s yours?" Jon sneered at him. "Do you know of House Martell? Of course you don't. They sit with the Tyrells and the Lannisters among the richest people in Westeros. That wax that seals the scrolls containing that filth bears their mark. You're a house girl? You warmed the bed of one of the princes and decided to come here because your whore mother thought you could live at Winterfell?"

You surged forth before Tormund could make a move, scorching within, and gripped Jon Snow's leathers. "I am Y/N of House Dayne, and my mother is Yseria of House Dayne, and she is no whore. She is a Lady of Dorne and if you say one more word defaming her, I will cut you stem to stern and we'll see what a bastard is made of, brother or no!"

Your regrets came immediately in the still, silent room. You let go of the front of Jon's clothes and stepped away, covering your face with your hand. You could feel Tormund's eyes, but could not face him.

"Your father was Arthur Dayne?" Jon asked, his voice settled, no anger possessing his features now.

"Both of you, swear to me now you will repeat none of this. Both of you, please, my life depends on this." When both men acknowledged their promise, you sought to busy your hands by fixing Jon's face. You dipped a clean cloth in cool water and dabbed at the blood. It was not so bad as you thought. "No, I am not his daughter, I was his niece. I never met him. Your father returned our family's ancestral blade, Dawn, after killing him, and I think that. . .Your father and my mother must have. . .made a terrible mistake. My father was Arnold Dayne, and I do not know if he ever found out that I was not his child. I suppose I am not of House Dayne at all, but rather a bastard--Ned Stark's bastard."

Jon's eyes were molten rock. "You've been living here all this time, and you haven't told me?"

"I did not know if I could trust you, and you did not want anything from me but information about Tormund. Yes, I knew that those scrolls were meant for me, and I could not afford anyone else opening them of curiosity. I know who they are from, and while I do not know how he found out my location, I know he will not betray me." The more you spoke, the harder it got to look at either of them.

"Your name is Raya, far as I'm concerned." Tormund's voice was like a boot sliding over gravel. "I do not care if you're not a virgin. Who is the man?"

Your first instinct was to deny them the information. Your second was that it could hardly matter now. You shook your head, however. "For the sake of all of our safety, it is better not to know. I am safe as long as the rest of them think that I am a strumpet peasant girl of disinteresting origins."

"Prince Oberyn Martell." Jon pointed to the pages you held. " _The_  Prince Oberyn Martell, he wrote those?"

You were sullen at him, but nodded. "He is, among many things, a skilled poet."

" _You’re_  the Princess of Dorne?"

" _No_ ," you said sharply. "Damn it, I told you that I did not want to speak of this!"

"You are his wife?" Tormund asked.

You laid your hand on his chest and stepped closer to him, finally. "No, Tormund, not his wife, not his lover. I was promised to him when I was twelve, but my lineage was not truthful, and therefore there can  _be_  no marriage. I went to him personally, all the way to Sunspear, after Mother told me I had to leave Dorne, and told him the truth, and I begged him to make no war with my mother or my house."

"You were to be his wife, and he would send such things to you?" Tormund narrowed his eyes.

"I--you would just have to know Oberyn." You tried not to smile. "He pursued me with poems like these ever since I first flowered. It is just his way. Oberyn would never, ever harm me, would never even  _try_  to harm me."

Jon cleared his throat. "If you told him of the disgrace and left Sunspear whole, why has he continued?"

"It is too hard to explain to Northern people," you said with a sigh. "Dornishmen are. . . _fiery_. Their blood runs hot. They never hide their passions like you Northerners. I was raised in the west, in the mountains of Dorne, much closer to, say, Highgarden than Sunspear, where things are more. . .tame. But Oberyn? If you throw a dart into a crowd of people, you would likely hit one that he had bedded. He's just. . .Oberyn. And a great friend to me. My confidante. These letters are. . .inappropriate, and under normal circumstances, I would write him a letter and give him a piece of my mind--under normal circumstances, we would already be wed--but I will just have to keep intercepting them until I can figure out what else to do."

"I'll give him a fuckin' piece of  _my_  mind," Tormund said.

"He's thousands of miles from here." Jon drifted to the door, sluggish, weighed down by these words, all of these words. He did not look back. "Y/N, please come and speak to me when you are done. I'll meet you at the Maester's Tower."

Alone again, the room settled into an uneasy quiet. You wrung your hands in front of yourself and sighed several times, unable to come up with more words. Part of you was relieved to have told the truth after so many lies for so long. Mostly, you were anxious, terrified. With just a few pen strokes, Oberyn had undone all of your careful hiding, the web of your deceptions. Worse. . .Tormund was angry, and, underneath that, hurting.

"Tell me the story," he said after a while. "Don't say that you can't, not now."

"Truthfully, I don't know much more than what I have said. Mother sent me away after Ned Stark--my true father--was killed. She told me that I needed to flee north, that Jon Snow was my twin brother, and that she had protected me fiercely for many years, but she did not believe even she could protect me from what was to come. She was not very descriptive, and I was so devastated, and I of course had to inform Oberyn."

"Don't say his name."

"I'm sorry," you whispered. "I am very sorry."

"I don't really know what poetry is," he said at length. "I'm not a prince."

You reached forth and grasped his hands in yours, looking earnestly in his eyes. "All of the ways Oberyn has tried to make me feel with his poems and his jokes and his suggestive speaking over the past few years, you have made me feel in only a week. I know you must understand how difficult that is for me to say out loud."

"Do you love him?"

"In a way," you admitted. "In the way that one comes to love things that are familiar, people who are kind to you, who are your friends. . ." You squeezed his hands again. "Not in  _this_  way."

He nodded, and, after several long moments, you realised that that was simply that. He had nothing more to say about it.

"Can you forgive me?" You wiped your cheek. "Can you forgive me for not telling you the truth? For being Jon Snow's sister?"

"I think this has been much harder for you than for me. It’s been your life for years, mine only a short while." He hugged you, a big bear hug. "I don't want to call you Y/N, and I don't want any more letters. Do you know what Raya means?"

"No." You were too busy hugging back to let your heart be troubled. "I never knew it meant anything. I thought you just liked the sound."

He stepped back enough to look at you, looking mildly amused with himself. So godsdamn beautiful. He smiled, so lovely and mischievous, and tilted his head down at you. "I'm the only one that gets to call you Raya, because Raya is the Old Tongue for 'mine'."


	6. Chapter 6

The Maester's Tower became the unofficial meeting place for Ned Stark's bastards. Between both of you, there were only mere minutes of any given day that could be stolen, but there were few things you looked forward to as much as meeting your twin and finally,  _finally_  talking about the private concerns that connected you. The two of you were quickly able to make a determination to which you mutually agreed regarding your separation at birth; Jon did not look like a Dayne, and you did not look like a Stark, and one questionable baby was all that either of them could handle. Yseria kept her daughter, Ned kept his son, and, as far as the two of you could tell, never spoke to each other again.

There was, of course, an incalculable sum of unanswerable questions that you both had regarding the hows and whys and whats, but, mostly, you would sit and listen to each other talk about what the other parent was  _like_. You enjoyed hearing of Ned Stark, what he had been like, but you had grown up believing yourself to be the trueborn daughter of Arnold Dayne, and he would always be your father. Jon, though, knew no mother, ever, and would sit quietly with boyish joy lightening his perennially sullen visage.

"I've been dying to meet my mother my entire life," he told you. "Will there ever be a time when. . .we can go back? Whatever this unknown danger is, when it passes, would you allow me to escort you back to Starfall so that I could just meet her?"

"I hope that it becomes possible, and if it ever does, we will leave immediately from our places and go and visit her. I do not know if there is a scandal surrounding her name. . .If so, she may have been stripped of her title--but my brother would still take care of her. Well, half-brother, I suppose. I would that you  _had_  grown up in Dorne, even as a bastard, because, well, there are few who have cause to care. They are hardly treated different by civilised people, they only cannot claim lands or titles without Prince Doran's approval of their legitimisation." You glanced out the window quickly. "I have to change the subject, unfortunately, due to our limited time."

Jon nodded obligingly.

You leaned towards him. "I have come to discover that I truly am the only person that cares for Tormund as a prisoner. The room is only kept warm whenever I am like to be there, and he sleeps on the stone floor with his head on a sack of grain."

"How come you did not know this before?"

"Well, naturally Tormund would never tell me. He never complains about his situation with me because he is far too busy trying to antagonise me--it is just his way. To him, it is not so bad, especially considering he expected to be tortured and dead by this time. A hard land makes a hard man. When I confronted him with this knowledge, he did not deny it, and only said that he was mostly satisfied because he is fed, no longer at risk of blood poisoning, and. . .because I am the one who comes to tend him."

Jon nodded you on.

You cleared your throat and smoothed your dress over your knees. "When King Stannis summoned me after this, I told him that it was barbaric to keep a prisoner in such unacceptable conditions. I asked him to be better than kings past and to keep his prisoner's room heated, to give him at least a bedroll, arrange regular baths, some extra clothes so that his can be washed. . ."

Quiet laughter sparked like the fire. You recognised some similarities between your faces, in how delight peppered the features. "And how did the Good King respond to this?"

"Well, to be honest, I was rather frightened by his reactions. He told me that if I wanted any of those things, it would be at my effort and my arrangement, and I argued that I cannot possibly perform all my duties in addition. He rolled his eyes at me, but said that he would arrange for straw and a bedroll to be sent and for wood to be left outside the door for me to keep the fires lit and going. He told me that I could keep 'the wildling' warm in bed while his clothes were dried.

"What was fearsome was his eyes, at first, but then he abruptly told me that I was an erudite young woman with the capacity for great defiance and disrespect. He said that I must have grown up in such a way that I was safe from reproach, but that he would no longer tolerate my flagrant contempt and lack of decorum." You grimaced. "Jon, he is going to find out who I am."

"Is that really such a bad thing? If Mother sent you away when Father was killed, does that not mean she is afraid of the Lannisters? If so, Stannis would be perfectly willing to protect you from them. Perhaps it's no coincidence that you arrived around the same time."

You shook your head vehemently. "Nay, I cannot do that. Mother says. . . _none_  of them are to be trusted. Mother told me to find you and stay with you and that I would know when it was time to move forward."

"I'm to presume that you will keep me informed?"

"Yes, I should think my long-lost twin brother will be my trusted confidante." You smiled upon rising, and he did the same. After a moment's hesitation, you stepped across the spaces between you and gave him a hug.

The wind whistled through, bitter, rushing breath from your lungs. Jon leaned down to your ear. "You are my truest sister, maybe my last. Sansa Stark never cared much for me, and the prevailing thought is that Arya Stark is. . .dead. I will protect you. I swear it."

You gave a soft laugh. "And I will protect you, brother."

He held you back when you moved to take your leave. "Listen to me," he whispered in your ear. "There's to be a Choosing. There'll be a new Lord Commander. Brothers will nominate candidates and each man will cast his vote. If Ser Alliser becomes the official Lord Commander, I do not know how Tormund could survive."

"Then I will kill him."

"And then they'd kill you and him, both."

You squeezed more tightly. "Jon. . ."

"Do you love him?"

"I. . .I. . ."

"I have seen Tormund Giantsbane do many things, and I even believed him to be Mance Rayder, when we first were met. I was part of his raiding party. I've seen him kill indiscriminately, I've heard his rough talk, I've climbed all the way to the top of the Wall and back down the other side with Tormund Giantsbane. I had to shoot him, almost fatally, just to get him to stop attacking at the end of the battle. I know what he will do. I know what he is capable of doing.  _Listen_  to me," Jon tucked his arm tight around you when you tried to escape his hold. "I have been to see him a few times, to talk to him myself about the rest of the Free Folk, about their funeral rites, different manner of things.

"When a man is angry and in a mood to refuse meaningful talk, he closes his fists. When he is calmed, his hands open and holds them in no fixed position. Father taught me that. He taught me a lot about reading the language of bodies and what people  _do_  rather than what they say. Tormund doesn't want to talk to me, but if I mention you, his hands unfurl in his lap. He doesn't try to taunt me by talking ill of you, and he refused every bit of baiting when I tried dangling you above his head."

" _What_?"

"Forgive me, I did not know, and I need him to speak. I thought if I could get him talking about you, then he would loosen his tongue on other matters, but he would not. Not even a word. That's not the Tormund Giantsbane I thought that I knew. He guards you as closely as his other secrets. Those letters Prince Oberyn sent you would have made him laugh, but, well, look at my face. Has he ever hurt you? Tried to overpower you or threaten you to let him go?"

"He only jests of being uncuffed." Your voice was shaken, uncertain.

"I believe he's in love with you. I'll admit I did what I could to foster this. I intended to tell Stannis that if he separated you, Tormund would talk just to have you back."

You gaped at him, eyebrows both high and drawn together. You covered your mouth with your fingers.

Jon shook his head. "I will not do that, but that does not mean Stannis will not try this himself. Ser Alliser will let him. Ser Alliser would throw you over the top of the Wall and make Tormund watch. He'd probably let one of the rapers after you and make him watch. He'd do it just to get at me and Tormund, both."

"Jon!"

"I told you, I will protect you. I swear it on the Old Gods and the New. But I need to know if protecting you means protecting him as well."

"Yes," you said without hesitation.

 

* * *

 

Your long, round-about walk to avoid drawing much attention to yourself had you plagued with those threats. If Jon said that Ser Alliser was that kind of man, probably he was, which made you fearful for yourself and for Tormund. You ignored and avoided the eyes of every brother of the Night's Watch who passed and took an early supper with you to the room where Tormund was kept.

He gave a grin from a place close to the hearth, tucked into his bedroll. You could see he wore no shirt. "Raya, hello!"

"You're still waiting on your things to dry?"

He looked down, then up at you again, watching you drag a chair over and place the tray on it. "Oh. I'm not completely naked. I promise. Come."

"I do not care very much at this moment." You toed out of your shoes and made for him quickly, moving the cover aside to make room for yourself. You remembered how comforting it felt to be close to him, and needed that desperately. It was all the better that he smelled nice and felt hot. Your worries weighed you down, and you tucked your head beneath his chin and laced your fingers behind his neck. "Oh, Tormund!"

His demeanour shifted instantly from mischievous charge to the strong, empathic. . .interest.

"Raya. . ." He folded his arms around your middle. "What's gotten you? Where is my smiling mermaid?"

"I shall never let them hurt you and I shall never let them kill you." You tried to get even closer, but there was only so much space left between you. "Do not panic, because I have heard nothing to that effect, but. . .I was talking with Jon. . ."

"Don't let him fill your head with nonsense," Tormund said, his hand soothing on your back, rubbing a lazy circle. "You are my Raya."

"Jon  _was_  planning on going to Stannis at some point and having the king keep us separate. As a means of getting you to talk."

You could feel his jaw working. "May've worked. May've gotten me to say what they want to hear, but not the truth, and then there is my little Raya again, safe and sound and  _here_."

"Jon says that soon there will be a new Lord Commander, and it may be Ser Alliser Thorne. He's the older gentleman you wounded quite badly before men took him away, do you remember?"

"Curly hair?"

You nodded.

"Aye, I recall the man."

"Jon says he is capable of horrible things. That, if he knew Jon was my brother, Ser Alliser would toss me over the top of the Wall or let rapers have me and have you both watch."

His hand cradled the back of your head and he drew back far enough for you to see his darkened eyes and snarl. "That cunt'll never get his hands on you. I don't care if I have to chew through me own arm. Hear me? Hear me, Raya?"

"Yes, of  _course_ , love." You leaned in and kissed him. "We, neither of us, would allow anything to happen to the other."

"Truer words never spoken." He touched your foreheads together. "Do not let Jon Snow put a lot of ideas in your head."

"I haven't thought of it," you said.

"What?"

"What we will do, when this ends."

Tormund raised his eyes. "This does not end."

You felt the coarseness of his beard beneath your palm again. "They cannot and will not keep you here forever. When your captivity ends, I have not thought about what we do then."

"Oh." Tormund shrugged. "Jon Snow will release you with me."

"I am not a prisoner," you told him.

"But he'll release you with me, all the same."

"And then?"

"Where is it you're from?"

"Dorne."

"Then Dorne."

Your eyes grew large and hopeful. "You would come to Dorne with me?"

"It wasn't about taking over Castle Black, it was about getting the fuck out while the getting is still good. All my people have talked about is getting as far south as south goes for years. Killin' these cunts was just to get through the gates and hide behind this Wall, same as the others, but we won't stop there."

"I do not know when it will be safe for me in Dorne again," you admitted. "But I am willing."

"I don't want you to know what's up there," Tormund said, his fingers pushing blonde curls behind your ear. "I stand between you and the Others. Understand me?"

You lay back in his bedroll and guided him above you by the shoulder. He eased down to his side and looked down at you like he thought you were as breathtaking as you found him. All at once, between these long looks, your skin grew irritated and entirely unhappy with the dress that covered you from your wrists to your neck and down to your ankles. It was never quite comfortable, but necessary to guard against the cold weather, and it was a far cry from what anyone would recognise you in.

You thought of the gossamer things, so soft, helping the sun to wick away heat and moisture. Tormund had probably never seen a woman in such a state of dress. You smiled gently at the thought and pulled one of his hands to the sway of your waist. "From the time I was fourteen, I would wear dresses with the sides cut out, like here, and backless, with a neckline down to. . .right around here." With all the determination you could muster, you tried not to blush at placing his hand over the rise of your breasts. "My lovely Margaery would come to visit us from Highgarden. She said, 'The people sometimes say that my costumery is far too revealing for decency, but it looks as though I could pull one strap on that dress and the whole thing would fall away from you, like a cloud, making no sound and only drifting down.'"

"Fuck Margaery, you would be gorgeous in half a deerskin." Gods bless his heart and soul, he was trying  _so_  hard not to actually touch you, but the strain was visible. His fingertips hovered above you, big knuckles turning this way and that.

You smirked up at him with a softly wrinkled nose. "Do you want to know what else Jon told me?"

"No."

"He said that you were ruthless and uncouth, a brute force of nature meant for killing, but you guarded me as well as your other secrets." You laughed, tipped your head back, and tried your best to imitate his voice and carriage. "'I believe he's in love with you'." You laughed harder, and kept expecting that he'd join in, but Tormund remained quiet at your side. Your chuckling faded naturally, but when you got a good look at his face, you were in an uproar.

Leaning over top of you, Tormund pushed aside more of your hair, got his fingers good and lost in it. He seemed to formulate his next words carefully, and you resisted the urge to stop him, to tell him it wasn't important, to tell him that you only meant to have a laugh at Jon.

"I told him once that I knew his woman loved him 'cause all she ever did was talk about killin' him," he began. You gave him your full attention. "What do you reckon makes him believe that?"

"I assure you, I don't know. I don't understand the way his mind works. He and I speak different languages. Figuratively," you clarified. "I did not mean to confront you about the idea. I thought it was quite nice that you do not respond to his attempts at badgering you about me. He told me that he'd attempted."

"Try to do it anyway."

You hummed softly and looked up to the ceiling. "Your reaction to the letters that Oberyn sent to me. How you thought Jon meant he'd written them for me, and gave him a bit of a row. Like I mentioned, how you guard your words about me, or speak none at all. I'm not sure what all Jon knows and what he doesn't know, really. I think he sees how much I care for you."

He rolled his eyes. "You love me. Just admit it."

"He asked me if I did. Love you."

"Why?"

"Because he wanted to know if protecting me meant protecting you, too."

Tormund tilted his head, working that over in his mind. He pursed his lips. "Wonder if he thinks I'm only using you."

You gave him a look of disbelief, then scoffed and hit his arm. "What an ass you are!"

He laughed indelicately, his hand framing your face now, and shrugged. "Didn't say it was the truth. I don't understand that boy's head, either. My worst fear, aside from dying at this awful place, is that we're gonna hafta take care of him for the rest of our lives."

"Because the rest of our lives are strictly reserved to be together?"

Tormund leaned over you then and kissed you, one hand managing to cover half your midriff. He looked in your eyes when he pulled back a bit, nodded. "I fuckin' knew you were mine from the first. I would've told you, if I'd thought you'd listen. Ya gonna tell me you love me or not?"

You smirked up at him. "So casual. So nonchalant."

"Oh, fuck you."

You laughed so hard that it was impossible to kiss you properly, but bless him, he tried.


	7. Chapter 7

 

 

Tormund said nothing when Jon brought him food to break his fast. Before the lad could leave the room, Tormund shouted at his back when Y/N would return, where you were, but the boy only paused, then left the room. Hours passed. Tormund paced the floors, growing out of his skin. What had happened to you? You'd never failed to come to him before. Was it one of the rapers? Was it that Alliser cunt? Did your own twin brother betray you?

He tried not to let on to Snow when the boy came back. He was unable to stop his own glowering, but said nothing. If the bastard had done something with you, anything at all, Tormund imagined creative ways to end his life there in that room.

By the third day, he was furious, but filled with anxiety. Jon Snow did not turn up until noon, and when he did, Tormund grabbed hold of him and pulled him inside the room. "Did you forget what I said to you, boy? Did you forget what I did to your face?"

Jon took a deep breath so it swelled his chest, but did not exhale. Just stared back at Tormund with those dark, dark eyes.

"She told me about it, about how you wanted to keep her away to get me to talk. I could say anything, you know. Do you wish to know where my people are?"

"Tormund--"

"Have you checked up your own ass?"

Jon gripped his arm and shoved him away. "Y/N will probably die. That's why she's not here, and I don't have time for this. I've only known she's my sister for a short time and already she's going to. . .I wrote her betrothed, sent him a raven, asked him to inform her family members in Dorne."

Tormund took shallow breaths and drew up to his full height, towering over the lad. "You should start talking."

"There's not much to say." Jon pressed his lips in a tight line, but looked visibly upset enough for Tormund to stay his fists. "She took a fever a few nights ago, and it's only gotten worse. She is the only healer, but most of the time she's useless to tell anything that could help her condition. You can feel the heat radiating off her skin, her forehead, her hands, her neck. She has shaking fits and is not strong enough to stand anymore."

It took quite a while for either man to speak again. Tormund chose not to believe the words at first, but when Snow's shoulders fell and the boy walked over to the table and sat in  _your_  chair, when Snow leaned over, those same kinds of curls as yours obscuring his face, a sick feeling began to spread within him.

"If you are lying to me. . ." Tormund took steps towards him. "You've said nothing for  _days_."

"She personally asked me not to say anything about her condition, to just tell you that she was busy performing her duties due to a fever spreading through the bunks. She did not wish for you to worry. She was certain she could identify and treat her illness." Jon brought his hands to his head when some sort of whistle broke through the air. "Hear that?"

Tormund walked closer to the window, his lips parting. It was not a whistle, but a scream. A high-pitched, very loud scream. "What are they doing to her?"

"Sam and Gilly, has she told you of them?"

Tormund nodded.

"They're trying to save her life. Sam reads a lot, and Gilly grew up beyond the Wall, where she and her. . .sister-cousin-niece-mother-aunts had to take care of themselves. She knows some herbs and healing, but not like Y/N and for sure not like a maester."

"What are they  _doing_  to her?"

Jon swallowed and looked up at him. "They've taken her to the stream, and they're putting her in the water."

"What?"

"The fever will kill her if they don't. Princess Shireen went looking for some kind of tree bark she says will lower the fever."

"Listen to me, Snow." Tormund gripped the table and glared down at him. "If she's gonna die, I hafta see her first. There's something I've got to make right, and I want to see her. I can't. . .You help me do this, and I'll think of something I can tell Stannis."

"He considers her to be lost." Jon stood. "Snuff out that fire, Tormund."

"Snow?"

Jon glanced back at him before unlocking the door. "Snuff that fire, eat, and wait here. I'm going to help Gilly and Sam bring her here."

Tormund beat the walls until his blood stained them. Looking down at his busted skin, he could hear you calling him stupid, a dumb animal. He grew panicked again. If Jon Snow was really bringing you to him, then it was true. Tormund knew that death came sudden to some, as did the plague and the pox, had seen it rip through camps and settlements and leave nothing in its wake. Loud thudding erupted in the stairway, then voices. The scrape of metal, the turn of the locking mechanism.

"Be careful!" said the brown-haired wildling girl. Craster's. Gilly. She had an odd look about her, but wide, kind eyes that did not leave you. Jon Snow and the fat Crow carried you in on a litter, and Gilly kept up her orders. "Careful, lay her down careful!  _Sam_!"

The men laid you down across from the bare-embers fire. Jon Snow looked down at you with a bitter look. The fat Crow, Sam, tried to smile at Tormund.

"We've made some progress, I think. Her body's cooling, I think. I'm fairly sure."

Tormund knelt down beside where you were shivering, twisting, and looked at the thin white dressing gown you'd been dressed in over sopping wet skin. He looked back at the others. "Get out."

"Well, I think--"

"No, Sam." Jon clapped his brother on the back. "Leave them a while."

Gilly tapped on Tormund's shoulder. "You there, oy. You give her these drops if she starts to cough up a spell, and I'm coming back in half an hour, tops. It might be five minutes, it might be fifteen."

He took them and nodded, eager to say or do anything for them to leave. As soon as the door was shut and locked, he was down on the floor beside you, guiding himself close. "Raya, Raya. . ."

"I told them  _not_  to. . ." Your voice was so weak. He smiled against your cheek and nuzzled against it.

"That's just fever talking. I know you wanted to see me."

"I didn't want this to be the last you remembered of me," you protested.

"I know you can pull through. I know you can." It was a lie. He'd seen death too many times, seen people mad with fever out in the open snow, left there outside of camp because they were going to die, anyway, and there was no sense in spreading the disease. He didn't  _know_  anything. "I love you, aye?"

"I love you," you said, your eyes troubling to focus. "I am sorry, I should have said. . ."

He laughed. At least there was that lightness in his heart. He shook his head. "Doesn't matter. I want you here beside me until you get better. I'll bite the neck out of any man who tries to take you away, even Snow. Just rest. I'll tell you stories."

"Your stories are dreadful."

"You love my stories." He kissed your temple. You were burning alive. If this fever did not soon break, it would cook you from the inside out. He took a deep breath and exhaled against your hair, which was wet and darkened. "Think about Dorne. Think about the water and the colours and the mountains. Where do you want me to go with you first?"

"The black sand beach," you whispered, taking his hand. It was so hard to move. You shook off tears. "I don't want to die."

"You're not allowed." His voice was strangled. "Do you hear me?"

"Yes. . .you are  _so_  loud." You coughed.

"Who did you get this from? Have they died?"

"No one."

Tormund narrowed his eyes in question, holding you skin to skin, hugging the curves of your body with his. "What? It's not possible for you to get this sick and no one else gets it. It's been days."

"I don't know, I don't. . ." your voice faded, and he began to grow nervous. You grabbed at his hand weakly. "You are right."

"That is the first time I've ever heard you say that." Tormund jested, his nose at the back of your neck.

You squeezed as hard as you could, felt calluses on his fingers. "Tormund, I need Gilly. Sam."

"Just stay with me." His voice was even more unstable. "She'll come back soon and I have a whole life to tell you of before then."

You squinted against the banging, pounding pain inside your skull. "I am not ill."

"You're the one thing I got to look forward to. D'ya know how shitty it was to see Snow instead of you?"

"Fingernails."

"What?" Tormund sat up and looked over you. "What is it Raya?"

You flexed your fingers as best you could, trying to remember the rhyme. "'Red joints, blue nails, fever and head full of nails'. Are they blue? Press them."

He pressed down at your nails like you asked, waited to see white and then pale red, but there was something bluish instead. He rolled you onto your back and looked over you again. "Aye, they're blue. What is it?"

You gasped. "Poison. Adder's f-fang. I need. . .Gilly. Sam. Tell them. Adder's--fang."

Tormund watched in horror as your body started to seize and spasm. It was all too much to process, so he just acted. He set his hand between your teeth like he had to do for Orell when he did this as a boy and shouted the names you'd said until someone else came.

 

* * *

 

"You must be more important than I thought."

Your eyes opened. You were still weak, but no longer convulsive, not even cold. Warm furs were piled on top of you. You started. Kneeling in front of you, eyes to your eyes, was Stannis Baratheon. You groaned only softly and shut your eyes against him.

"I received a raven from Oberyn Martell. Note that  _you_  did not receive a raven from him, I did. Particularly quick raven, and particularly large."

"He trained at the Citadel. He grew bored, but not before he learned of ravens and healing. Especially poisons."

"Prince Oberyn is well-known for those talents, among many others. He was instructed on your condition by someone, he did not say whom, and wrote me personally to inform me of which antidotes would commonly be found in any Maester's Tower and to try them all on his beloved."

Tears slipped out from beneath your eyelids. You needed a lie. To protect Jon and the others. "I wrote him to say goodbye."

Stannis sighed. "Girl, there is little that I can do with you anymore, not without earning myself a very poor place with a very powerful family who just so happen to possess the same enemies as I do, but there's a frantic wildling in chains who has been screaming for you like a madman, and I can do whatever I wish with him."

"Fuck you. Bring him to me." You had  _never_  used language so coarse in all your life--Mother and Septa Nadya would have slapped you silly--but the weight of consequences of every sort and from every angle crested upon you like waves, and you felt part of yourself unravel. You sat up, not realising at first that you were unclothed beneath your furs. Stannis did, but his eyes never left yours. You hastily held up the furs to cover yourself and leaned close to him with a snarl on your face. "I have feared you too much for too long. You're right to fear Oberyn and House Martell, but you have no idea how much you should fear  _me_." Your body was still so weak, you knew you could look like no threat.

"Imagine my surprise when I wrote back to him and got the next raven in half a day," Stannis smirked at you curiously. "Oberyn Martell has been riding for Castle Black since his victory against Ser Gregor Clegane at King's Landing. That's almost a month."

"I do not have the energy to sit here and trade threats. Remember. Your. History. Dorne has never bent the knee, neither will I, neither will Oberyn, and how will your frozen, starving soldiers and sell-swords fare against a well-provisioned cavalry and the Red Viper? He killed the Mountain That Rides, just as you said."

"How do you suppose your beloved will feel about his beloved consorting with a filthy, ill-begotten heathen?"

"If you know this much now, you know you wasted your gold, as well. I am untouched. You thought you had made a whore of me, but I made a  _fool_  of you." You fell back against an ornately carved headboard, your chest heaving.

"Do you know who I thought you were?" Stannis asked.

"Bring Tormund to me."

"I thought you were some Blackfyre bastard sent here for espionage by the trueborn Targaryen. Some cheap imitation of a near-extinct threat."

"Then it was you that poisoned me."

He shook his kingly head. "No. Not I, not any man or woman in my employ. The Red Lady advised me to keep you safe and keep you close until she read another vision in the flames. Someone else. Someone who is your true enemy, who has found you here, where only I can offer you protection, for the time being."

"How gracious of you. I want Tormund."

"I have offered to conduct the ceremony here," Stannis said, standing. "Prince Oberyn has probably already responded."

You knocked aside the small table by your bed in a swelling rage. "Have him brought to me or I won't rest until you are engulfed in flames like your false god!"

He grabbed a fistful of your soft blonde curls, making you yelp. "Watch yourself. You are not immune to fire, now or ever. I will have my pound of flesh."

When he was gone, you found your robe on the bedpost and shrugged it on. Your throat was dry and aching for water, which you saw on a table across the room, close to the roaring fire. Although you feared it for poison, you still gulped it down straight from the bronze jug, stopping to breathe harshly every few seconds.

He was coming. Oberyn rode for Castle Black. There were huge, missing puzzle pieces--how, after your careful explanations, could he still wish to wed you, how  _could_  he still do so? How had he known where to find you--for almost a full month's time already?

Who had slipped you the poison?

Jon pushed open the door, Tormund behind him. Tormund was chained at his wrists and behind his elbows, as well as a shorter chain between his ankle shackles. You stepped forth and hugged your brother briefly, then stepped back. You pressed a finger to his lips.

"Please unchain him and leave. You are my brother and I love you and I thank you for everything you did for me, but there is no time. Please. Trust me. We will speak soon. Very soon."

He gave no verbal protest. As the chains fell away, Tormund flexed his joints and muscles that had been cramped for--how long had you been in and out of consciousness? It was then that you noticed your hand was shaking. There was no way to know just yet how damaged your body had been, and how much of that damage was permanent. There was just no time to make that assessment now.

When the door clicked shut and you were alone, he began to speak. His voice was hoarse and rasping. "Raya, I was--"

"I know, love," you whispered, arms coming around him. You sniffled against the furs he wore. "I love you, aye?"

"I love the bloody piss out of you. Never do that again, you hear me?" He had you pinned between those big arms that scared others and loved you. "I'll find 'em and I'll poison 'em and I'll tear their belly open so they can watch it work. Look how small you are, and someone tried to kill you."

"Ssh." You ran your hand through his tangled, almost sandy-coloured hair. "Stannis cannot have you killed now. I will have you freed."

"And then you'll come with me."

You squinted your eyes against his clothes and composed yourself. "I love you. Do you understand what that means to me?"

"Raya."

You stepped back, unfastened your robe, and let it fall. Tormund quit moving, quit breathing for a second, so you took his much larger hands and placed one on your hip, one on your breast. "I want you to love me."

He looked like it  _hurt_ , like he'd been stabbed in the gut. "You are a maiden and I know why you're a maiden and you  _are_  a goddess."

"Listen to me," you whispered, touching his face. "My decision is made. Is yours?"

"It's. . .not so much a  _decision_ ," he uttered.

"I've chosen you. I don't know what you have heard, what you've been told, or what you will hear, but I have chosen  _you_."

He swallowed. "That's a good thing to know. Raya, I was watching you when you were at the point of no return. I saw how weak, how sick. You are more fragile to me, now. I feel like I will break you."

"I do not break," you whispered.

It felt powerful, to have him look at you in such a way. You had seen a man starved for water from the desert, and it was much the same; your bravery began to fade. You became acutely aware that no one had ever gazed on your naked flesh before.

He was not your husband, but you had already stepped far beyond the bounds of a highborn lady, and, you reminded yourself, you were not one, after all. You were a Sand, and women of the sand lived and breathed as they wished. "Tormund?"

He tilted his head towards the bed. "Go ahead and climb up."

With an obliging smile you boosted yourself up onto the rather big sleigh bed and lent a thought to where in Castle Black you could be. You gasped when your back hit the starched bedsheets; Tormund had pulled you by the knees and stood at the edge of the bed between them. Your thighs trembled.

"I told you that I lack knowledge," you said shyly.

"Don't need it." Tormund shed his belt and layers until his chest was bared, then bent over your body to first kiss your lips. "You know that I won't hurt you, Raya?"

You closed your eyes and gasped. Now, this pulsing between your thighs may finally have meaning to you, other than a questionable feeling that persisted. It was happening again, as it did whenever you were close and intimate this way, and though you could not name it, it made sense to ask. You opened your eyes and found him looking right down into them.

"What is it I feel?" You arched your back, your fingers lacing a crown above his head.

"The gods, I think. Everyone has their own opinion."

"You think I'm feeling the gods? Your gods?"

"They're all the same." Tormund dismissed. "Whatever they are, the only gifts they give to us are life, death, and this."

You blushed, realising that his hand was moving down your chest and stomach. "And you say that you are not a poet."

He laughed to himself, his head following his hand. Wherever rough skin passed, smooth lips touched, moving down, down, further down. . .you did not understand, still.

"What is of the gods, exactly?" Your body jumped and started; his hands were on your knees again. "Oh Tormund, you--"

"I love you," he said, his forehead touching below your bellybutton. "I know you waited to be married, and you've given that up, but you're going to understand that men and women make vows when they lie together, forgetting what the law says."

"How do we make those vows?" The question was lost, erased by the shocked cry that he caused with his tongue. You reached down without looking, but his hands were there, waiting for yours. Your fingers locked together, you holding on for life, Tormund giving his strength.

You knew what he was doing--it was the one act that Oberyn referred to explicitly, rather than implicitly. He'd told you once that men above and outside the borders of Dorne had no clue what it was to love their women this way. You'd oft wondered what it was to be this flower, this fruit, and here Tormund was showing you.

You let go of his hands to grip the bed beneath you, and his pulled your bashful thighs further apart. Your hands moved about, looking for secure grip, for something that seemed solid as the world was melting all around you, and you were melting, something sweet for him.

All those times he'd sent you away with your thighs blushing, and you had wondered. . .but this was so much  _more_. He was winding something within you, guiding you to something that would make you different. You could not cease the noises that fell from your lips, although you made some effort to contain them into softness--except every new motion coaxed more out of you.

Gods, you'd been a fool to have only  _pretended_  before. . .When he could have been doing  _this_  to you. . .

Tormund pushed you further and further down this path until your hand wound up twisted in his hair. Then, he started to stroke your leg with one hand and slowly moved to stand. When you sat up to air your grievances, he buried his face in your neck and pulled your hands down to the front of his trousers. You gasped sharply, but made no move to stop him. There was something, you did not know what, that you craved so deeply--no one had ever made you want something so badly before. That desire fogged your mind, and you forgot that you were a virgin girl untying the trousers of an avowed, dangerous killer.

He wasn't so patient now. Suddenly, he seemed to touch all of you at one time, his lips, his beard, his arms, his hands. You tried to lie down again, but he would not let you take your hands away from him. You wanted to kiss him, so you did, without thinking, and there was the taste of yourself on him, and his beard was wet. . .He held one of your hands so that it moved, gliding along his skin, and he cursed loudly, startling you.

"This is what you did," you said, nose to nose, looking in his darkened eyes as though you were the one who knew. "When you had me leave."

Tormund kissed you, smiles against your lips, and nodded. No shame. "Aye. I thought of this. I tried to remember what it felt like when I held you up and what I felt when you would say my name."

"Come up on the bed with me, love, and I'll tell you what I felt." He moved eagerly, and you giggled softly. "Perhaps that was misleading. I did not understand what I was feeling. I felt. . .incomplete. Missing something. I did not want to know what that meant without you."

"You never fuckin' will. I'll crush the skull of any man that tries to take my place with my bare hands." Those hands meandered back onto your body, playing over your skin, until he touched you between the legs and you gave a near shout of delight. "Relax as much as you can, and trust me."

The sudden intrusion of his finger was anything but relaxing; you felt like your whole body was tensing, but Tormund kissed your ear, whispered comforting words, and his thumb caressed you, moving as well as his tongue had. You wanted more so badly that you let yourself collapse against a feather mattress. Your heart was pounding and you felt a small wave of embarrassment at the way he looked down at you, but you held his gaze.

Then it was lovely. You did shout, this time, against his shoulder.

"Gods fucking damn it," he cursed, startling you. "How can you make someone want you so much?"

"How can you. . ." You were interrupted by a sharp gasp of your own and the fluttering of your eyelids, and you had to hold on tighter. "Tormund--Tormund?"

"You make me fuckin' mad for you." He gave you exactly what you did not know you wanted, more for your body to hold inside. You said something, maybe, but it sounded like nonsense words. Maybe he had driven you mad, as well. You were crying for more again, soon, making quiet sounds of protest at his apparent denial.

"Raya." Your lips met. "It will surprise you, and it might hurt--"

"Don't  _talk_ ," you demanded, shocked at the sound of your own voice, at your words.

Tormund just laughed and pulled his fingers away--which you protested, but he was shifting his body between your legs and it dawned on you for the first time in this intimate encounter that this man was roughly twice the size of you. "Try and relax again, Raya. I've got you."

This time, you did as he suggested, but it  _burned_. The sensation of your body stretching around him, it was sort of a burn, which you did not expect. You trusted his words, though, and felt his concern, and this is what you had wanted so badly without even knowing. All those moments, culminating to this. . .He was creating noise, too, now, but it was more exciting.

Tormund moved his fingers against you again, somehow, you did not know, you could not think, just gasp, devastated, all of this beautiful aching coming to an abrupt and far more beautiful finish.

This was what he meant, you thought when you could think again. The hand that had touched you was now holding fast to your hip, and he was perhaps a touch aggressive, and perhaps you would be a bit sore. You kissed his throat and he tensed, then said words that were bawdy, even for him, and slowed to a stop.

"Fuckin' fuck gods damn fuck me. . ." He kissed you hard, then sighed. "Gods damn it, I did not mean to do that."

You laughed loudly enough to draw notice, but could not force yourself to care. "It all seemed purposeful to me, love."

"You say that, but no one laughs when you wind up pregnant." He sighed again. "Fuck it, I'll fix. Just give me a moment."

"I did understand that this is how children are created," you said with playful incredulity.

"Doesn't need to be. You do what you will once the seed is planted, it is your choice." He kissed you again and then rolled to lay by your side. "What, do you want them?"

You hummed, moving your fingers through his hair. "I do. Perhaps now is not the time. The last time I cried, I was sick with the poison and looking at baby Sam and thinking how I would never have a son of my own. Or a daughter."

"I'll fix," he said again. "That wildling girl will know."

He moved, but you held onto his elbow. "No, don't. It can wait until tomorrow, can't it?"

Tormund nodded. "Aye. You want me to stay?"

"Jon locked the door behind you. It may not hold them off forever, but I doubt that anyone will come rushing to get inside soon." You yawned and stretched your toes. "I have never slept by anyone before. I want to sleep beside YOU."

"Aye." Tormund seemed perfectly satisfied in not having to move again and sunk into the mattress. "Are you hurting?"

"I am sore, but I feel good. That is all right?"

"Aye, don't worry about it. I know what to do if you hurt." He hung his arm across your belly and kissed you again. "Love you."

You smiled to yourself, your eyes closed, the furs warm around you. "I love you, Tormund."


	8. Chapter 8

They came at dawn. There was shouting and banging at the door, and you looked at each other whilst hastily dressing.

"Lock me up," he said.

"No, I won't." You nudged the irons aside with your feet and pushed your shoulders back. "To what do I owe the pleasure of this daybreak harassment? You will step back from this door, identify yourself, and then you will provide the explanation for which I have asked."

"Gods, listen to you." Tormund sat down at the edge of the bed and winked at you.

"My Lady, by decree of King Stannis Baratheon, First of His Name, King of the Andals and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, Protector of the Realm--"

"We've met," you interrupted.

"My Lady, we're to escort you to the executions."

You wrinkled your nose. "And just who or what will be executed?"

"Seventeen wildling prisoners. King Stannis wishes for you and your. . .consort to be front and centre."

"Seventeen including Mance Rayder?"

"No, my Lady. The Wildling King burns at sundown."

You rushed to silence Tormund, pushing your arm against his mouth. "My good man, I'm afraid I must dress. Please wait outside and we will join you."

Tormund stood and began to pace the floor. "He can't kill me without pissing off a girl barely five and a half feet, so he has me watch my people and me best friend murdered."

"He's doing this before Oberyn finds out." You swallowed, staring down at your hands. "Oberyn isn't here yet for me to ask him to step in."

Tormund stopped in his tracks, gaping at you. "What did you just say?"

"Oberyn," you said softly. "He's marching on Castle Black with some odd scores of Sun Soldiers. Not for war. Probably for. . .you know, intimidation. He hates the Baratheons, too." You cleared your throat. "I thought you knew that he would arrive soon. I did not know until my blow-out with Stannis last night, I promise."

"Why the  _fuck_?"

"I don't know, I intend to ask. Tormund, when I told you that I choose _you_ , when we. . ." You held your skirts when you stood to have something to do with your hands, anything. "I thought that you knew I was telling you that it didn't matter that he's coming here."

Tormund put his hand to his eyes and sighed. "Buggering hell. Fuck."

"We've got to move. Look," you reached for his other hand and squeezed. "Stannis's army is a beaten dog, and those mercenaries are looking cross-eyed. He does not want to do battle with Oberyn and he said himself he cannot afford to make an enemy of House Martell and the Kingdom of Dorne. Oberyn will try to please me, so what he's going to do is dance in through the gates and stick his cock down Stannis's throat--not really, Stannis is not his type, calm down--and. . ." You chewed your lip in thought. "I should go and convince him to stay the executions, but he won't."

"Your Prince won't care if eighteen wildlings die, why do I matter? What difference am I making?"

"He _will_  care if it pleases me," you strained to explain. "You are the line Stannis cannot cross."

"I'd rather die alongside my friends!"

"No! Do you think I gave a damn about wildlings before I met you? Did you give a damn about Dorne, and did you give a damn about Oberyn Martell just by hearing his name? No! You will stop this madness! Oberyn will take every wildling--every single one--back to Dorne and help them settle if that's what will please me."

"Because he loves you."

You nodded. "He does. I love him, too, he is my best friend and since I was twelve, I knew I was to be his wife, so I grew accustomed to the thought. But you? I _love_  you. Oberyn's tried convincing me to bed since I became a woman, but I gave myself to you, and you will have to just imagine that meaning something, because it may not mean anything to you and your people, but it means very much to me. Yes, he loves me, but he is a good, wonderful person and I swear you will know it when you meet him. He _can't_  marry me. He can't have me. It's very simple."

"So he does all of this, what, just to make a woman happy that he can't even fuck?"

"Is that the only reason you're kind to me? Would you not defend me and my friends, even if I would not _fuck_  you? Is that what this all boils down to, who gets to use my body?"

Tormund froze where he was, neck craning. Thinking. Observing carefully. "It's strange to hear you say those words. Cock, fuck."

" _That's_  what you have to say to me?" Your face was stuck in a sullen expression.

"I wasn't expecting that you could make it all make sense." Tormund held his arm up in a sort of shrug, then let it drop. "Many people are going to die today. It's not about who gets to fuck you, and you lot are not like the other kneelers."

You scoffed, but allowed yourself to relax some. " _We_ are not kneelers. _We_ are the slayers of dragons and conquerors."

His eyebrows rose. "Really?"

"I'll tell you later. Or Oberyn will." You tried to smile, tried to touch his face. "I do not want to, but we have to go. They will only return. It's better that we go, ourselves."

"Have you ever watched a man die?"

You nodded. "But not like this. This makes me sick. I am about to see seventeen relatively innocent and frightened people killed for no reason. To prove a point, but to whom?"

"There's _nothing_  you could say?" Tormund looked a bit desperate, and you understood it was a hard thing for him to ask.

"This. . .it's not purely coincidental, love. It is at least in part my fault. Stannis does not care if twenty people lose their lives if it serves so many of his purposes. He cannot hurt me anymore, but he could hurt you, or Jon, or Gilly, or the baby. I cannot convince him, or I would. You know this."

"If it's in part your fault, it's also mine." Tormund dragged both his hands down his face.

The rain began pouring down, and you walked out with Tormund to the cold and muddy yard where the gallows had already been assembled and stood front and centre where the guards had taken you. The freezing cold crept inside your bones. Gods, you hated this place, its horrendous climate, and, most of all, Stannis Baratheon. In truth, you found his claim to the Iron Throne to be the most legitimate, but hated him nonetheless. Legitimacy did not make a ruler just. The prisoners were marched out by armed guards and stood in a straight line behind the gallows in their garb of grey and white.

The only thing missing were the brothers of the Night's Watch. You looked around and saw not one black cloak.

"He will not use their gallows without them being present," you whispered to Tormund.

The man scoffed. "Doesn't he believe everything in the Seven buggering Kingdoms belongs to him?"

"Strictly speaking, the Wall and the Night's Watch don't belong to the Seven Kingdoms. The situation we are all faced with here is. . .unique."

Several moments later, just when the executioner appeared to begin to read the list of crimes that were to be punished today, every black cloak at Castle Black began to file in from the same direction. You looked about at their faces with some confusion, but your brother climbed the stairs to the gallows and interrupted the executioner.

"With all due respect to King Stannis Baratheon, as Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, I hereby stay to these executions until these men and women are properly tried. Each of these were captured on the night of the battle of Castle Black, and that makes them our prisoners, and that makes their fates up to the decision of the Night's Watch after a fair review and investigation has been made. These are to begin immediately."

You grabbed Tormund's arm and grinned up at Jon. Hardly anyone was so happy as you, but they did not matter.

"My apologies again, King Stannis," Jon said, looking directly at the man. "It was not my place to intervene previously, but I personally took most of these men and women into captivity. I watched them commit their crimes and it's my brothers' blood that they are paying for, not for any citizen of the Seven Kingdoms."

There was mass chaos and confusion following this in the yard, but you did see some of Jon Snow's mates taking the prisoners back in the direction of the cells.

The Red Lady approached. "Lord Commander, I do think that you must reconsider. Mance Rayder--"

"Is not my prisoner," Jon said, giving her a simple shrug. "I did not capture him, King Stannis's army did, and therefore I have no jurisdiction over his fate."

The rain stopped abruptly. Although your brother had left the gallows already, although you couldn't even quite make out his back, although there was a severely negative charge that clung to the moisture in the air, you smiled. He had bought time, precious time, as his first official directive as Lord Commander.

 

You were told by Edd to wait with Tormund in his storage room, so you did. Things almost felt as they had before, as if the knife did not hang over all your heads. Gilly brought meals to you, along with whatever words were being whispered.

When you sat at the table with Tormund to eat, you nudged his arm. "He did that on his own."

"He didn't help Mance."

"He couldn't. You heard."

"All right, so he couldn't. Doesn't make a great difference to me at the moment."

"The difference that it should make is that Jon helped us at no small expense to himself. You know why wildlings don't take prisoners?"

Tormund eyed you strangely. "You should know better than to call us that by now, and I understand the ways of the Free Folk quite well, given they're MY people."

"Because you have to feed them," you continued. "Winter is coming. Food is going to become scarce once it arrives, and he's more or less agreed to take on their care for we don't know how long. And how, my love, do you think that the rest of the Night's Watch feels about it? Or Stannis?"

"Snow does what suits him when it suits him," Tormund countered.

"I did not ask you to get on your knees before him and sing his praises, I only pointed out that he gave himself a raw deal in order to help us."

"You."

You slammed your bare fist down on the old wooden table, which was tiny enough to shake and rattle. "Try not to be such a bleeding hypocrite! If the roles were reversed, would Mance have done the same, just for  _you_? I like Mance a great deal. I don't know Jon very well, I admit that, too, but you must look on all these things with a critical eye and see that this is clearly in our favour, and that Jon has nothing to gain, strategically speaking, by keeping ME happy. Keeping seventeen prisoners alive, that he must feed and keep warm and provide medical care for, if need be, offers me no protection, either. It may be what suits him at the moment and nothing more, we don't know, but _enough_."

"Do you know what will happen once Mance is dead? There'll be no hope for the Free Folk," Tormund said. He looked down at his plate, but he wasn't really seeing it. "They're gonna die, all of 'em. They'll start killing each other again and they'll all be stuck beyond the Wall, and the Others will come, and that'll be the end." He looked across the table at you with his eyes narrowed. "Then, it'll be the Night's Watch, with your Brother Crow, and you, and me, then the Last Hearth, then Winterfell, and down and down and down until they reach Dorne, cross the mountains, and bring terrors your hot-blooded people can't even imagine. One by one, everything you ever knew, everything you ever loved, everything you ever bled for, it'll all be gone, just like it was for me." He leaned even closer, folding his arms beneath his chest. "If there's no Free Folk, there's nothing. No Westeros. No Dorne. No Essos."

Your hands froze in midair, holding knife and fork. "Tormund?"

"Hn?"

"I'm scared."

He sat back in his chair and didn't look very proud of himself. He looked down at his knees for a long time, then sighed heavily and reached across the table for your frozen hands. "That's why we're going to Dorne. South as south goes."

"But you said--"

"I never said that the worries end there. Just that we will live longer for escaping the North. Hey." He pulled so hard that you were forced to look at him. "If we have to get on a ship and keep sailing south until we reach the end or go back 'round, that's what we'll do, and I won't let a frosty bastard touch you. You won't become one of them--don't look away from me--you _won't_."

"That's precisely what I've come here to talk to you about." Jon closed the door behind himself, dressed in his heavy cloak of black. There had been so much tension and fear in the room that you hadn't noticed him come in.

Tormund let go of you and tilted his head at Jon. "What do you know of any of it, Snow?"

"Not enough." Jon came to a stop before the table, his arms crossed in front of himself. They fell down to his sides just as he started to chew at the inside of his cheek. "There's never been a time when the Night's Watch and the Free Folk needed each other more than now. You and I are not friends, but we are not enemies."

"You didn't quit being my enemy just because of your sister," Tormund said smoothly. "You didn't know that she was any more than I did. You didn't quit being my enemy just for not killing any more of my friends, today, _Lord Commander_."

Jon cast a brooding glance your way. "I heard all that, about sailing south of Dorne. Only running, never fighting."

Tormund stood so suddenly that his chair fell to the side and his full height and width compared to Jon's was nearly comical, if this weren't such a scary moment. "Easy thing to say to a man in chains."

"It wasn't my idea to clap you in irons again, any more than it was hers. I'm doing what I can, and I have to ask you again, Tormund: Where are the rest of the Free Folk? Where are they gathered?"

You folded under the uncomfortable silence. "I shouldn't be here. . ."

"Aye, you should." Jon placed his hand on your shoulder and pushed down to prevent you from standing, never looking away from Tormund. "The Free Folk haven't got to run. If you want a future worth living in, you'll tell me. I told Mance that I wanted to fight on the side that fights for the living, and that was true."

"We could've tried, under Mance." Tormund shook his head. "Not now."

"They'll follow you," Jon insisted. "Maybe they won't all follow you right away, but when they realise they're following you into safety, wouldn't they come along?"

"What's safe about living among kneelers? We do not kneel, boy. Not a single one of them will kneel to you for whatever you call safety or protection, and neither will I. Neither will _she_." He gestured behind himself toward you.

"It's not kneeling I want, nor do I deserve, I want you to stand _with_  me. I want you to fight with me, when the time comes. We need the Free Folk, and you lot need us. One won't make it without the other, and I can fucking promise you that there's no one south of the Last Hearth believes that the White Walkers are coming. It's up to us to show them before it's too late, and the Night King raises their corpses from the frozen ground and adds them to his army. Do you know what will happen to Y/N?" Jon let go of your shoulder now. "They'll eat her alive, literally, tear her limb from limb and make her suffer. You don't want that."

You leapt to stand between them, one hand on Tormund's chest to keep him from advancing on your twin. "No one wants anyone to be eaten alive, Jon, don't start with macabre manipulation."

"It isn't," he protested, dark eyes burning into yours. "They'll do it to him, too. To me. To our mum. Maybe you've got a baby inside of you now, and they take babies just the same--I've _seen_  it with my own eyes, Y/N. I don't want to see those horrors again. Tormund, if you're not going to listen to me, listen to her, think about a world that's safe for her and you and your children--"

" _Jon_!" You gaped at him, mortified. You couldn't bear to look at Tormund, who'd grown still and silent. "That's an absolutely repugnant thing to say to someone, you apologise this instant!"

"Snow's right." Tormund's voice was soft and distant.

Jon stepped around you and looked Tormund straight in the eye as he removed the other man's bonds. "I would send you north of the Wall, but I need to know where I'm sending you. Your people, the old, the sick, the children, they'll be the first to die, unless you square some of your pride and do all you can to protect them. They need a leader, and they need to be south of the Wall. There's lands bestowed to the Night's Watch, farmlands and villages, it's called the Gift. You've been there before, as I recall."

"Do you know Hardhome?" Tormund asked.

The newly appointed Lord Commander nodded. "I'll give you ten horses, nine more men. You can get that far in a week, and bring them here. I will open the gates and let your people through. You can go to the Gift, settle it, and when the time comes, you and I will join our people and we shall fight together, this time. We're the side that fights for the living."

Tormund shook his head. "We need ships."

"Then I'll ask King Stannis to allow us to borrow part of his fleet."

"You are coming with me," Tormund walked closer to him again, head tilted down and eyes wide. "They'll need to hear it from you before they'll believe it. I go there alone, spouting off shit about Jon Snow being Lord Commander and taking them away in ships, my people tear my guts from my belly and make me eat them. And we'll need Raya. Those that are there, the old, the sick, the wounded, the children, they'll all need tending or they could die on the journey."

"I've never been north of the Wall," you whispered. "I'll be the first Dornish woman to ever do so, I think. At least for centuries or millennia."

"I will go, but you should not assume that she should," Jon said. "I'm willing to risk my own life and yours, but we'll hardly be able to protect her if we're fighting just to make them all see reason."

Tormund shook his head with mirthless laughter. "You should not assume that she needs you protecting her, boy."

"I will go," you insisted quietly. "If there are people who need my help. One of you could become sick and injured. I will not sit here in this frozen castle and wait without breath to see my brother and my Tormund again. If the war for the dawn has come, then I can help bring the light, it is in my name and heritage. Yours, too."

"You're my blood." Jon squeezed your hand for a second. He looked back to Tormund. "Have we reached an agreement?"

The ginger nodded solemnly. "You, me, Raya, ships, and some crows. I agree to that. We can talk with them. That's where we start. Do not expect for them to listen. Not at first. I know my people."

"They want to be south of the Wall far more than they hate me or the Night's Watch. They need this. You need to convince them, for their sake."

"It seems as though you have some convincing to do yourself." You touched your forehead to his and gripped his shoulder. "We won't let them get our mum. You'll meet her, Jon, and she'll love you. You're her boy. Her grown up, whiny, pretty-as-a-girl boy."

He looked cross. "You're just as horrible as a proper sister should be. I've got to go and see if I can make Stannis amenable, after what I've just done."

Tormund gently pulled you away from your brother, back against his wall of a body. "When do we leave, Snow?"

"You'll know as soon as I do. Plan on dawn, and we'll work from there."

Alone again, you allowed yourself to sink against your lover and squeezed his hand tight. Tormund kissed the top of your head. "They won't be like me. You should know that."

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean."

"I mean the others, my people, they aren't. . .used to dealing with outsiders."

You scoffed and returned to the table, hoping to summon up an appetite for the rest of your food. "You never _dealt_  with outsiders, you just murdered them. I understand what you mean to convey. Will they be beside themselves with anger that you have a true southron. . .person?"

"That would defeat the entire principle of being free to do whatever the fuck I want."

"You're not married, are you?"

"Now who's a bleeding hypocrite?"

 

 

 

 

 

 


	9. Chapter 9

The wood creaked as the bow dipped up and down. The joints in your fingers burned and stiffened with the cold, but it meant little. This cold was nothing to you, now. You began to suck in freezing air, too thin air, rapidly, all over again, and did not stop until a hand gripped the back of your cloak.

“He needs you,” Jon muttered, his other hand gentle on your shoulder. “Y/N, you need to go and talk with him. He needs you by his side, and that’s where I need you, too. Please.”

“I didn’t know, I didn’t k-know,” you choked, glistening tears forming twin tracks down your cheeks. Your breath squeaked. “Oh, Jon, Jon, what will we do? How can we ever have hope again?”

He hushed you quietly and moved closer to your side. “When I was a boy, I realised that even our father needed Lady Catelyn to strengthen his bones, at times. Sometimes the only thing a man has to keep himself upright is his wife, and, while I may not be entirely certain of all of the customs, I think that this technically applies to you, as well. You did not see his tears as he watched his people being butchered. However great your fright, his need of you is greater.”

You nodded and brushed your tears away with a strong sniffle. “Of course. You are always right, my dear brother. Give me just a moment to gather myself. I’m…”

“Do not be sorry,” Jon told you. “Be angry. Be ready. Keep your strength, Y/N, and help him ready for the wars to come.”

Once again, you nodded, and your brother left your side and you were alone again. Well, relatively speaking. There were people all over, and yet it seemed that, for as many people as you had rescued, five times that amount had died, screaming in horror as jagged teeth sank into their flesh…

You breathed in deep, lengthening every notch in your spine until you stood as straight and poised as your mother had taught you to stand, as a proud woman of Starfall. You held your head high and walked through the crowds, offering apologies to anyone you had to push through in a calm and steady voice.

While you had been at the bow, Tormund was standing at the stern, his arms crossed against the rails and looking back at a shore that was lost to distance and icy waters. “Raya.”

“How did you know it was me that drew near?”

“I have known the magic of your footfalls for what feels like an endless lifetime.” He shifted so that he was looking at you over his shoulder. “I am so sorry that I have brought you here.”

You shook your silvery blonde head and closed the gap between yourselves. Your arms were not long enough to make it all the way around his layers and layers of furs, but his were easily able to make their way around you. “I’m not sorry,” you whispered where only he could hear. “I am scared, but I am not sorry.

"D'ya see?” Tormund gripped your face in his hands now, looking frantically in your eyes. He shook you slightly. “D'ya see?”

“Yes, of course.” You rested your forehead against his and began carding your fingers over his scalp. “I believed you, Tormund. I…I don’t know if Jon is right, that it’s possible to fight them. Wherever you go, there I’ll be.”

“What if he was right about a baby?”

You shook your head. “To worry about that now would only distract us from critical decisions that need be made now.”

“I want you to stay at Castle Black, just while I march my people to the Gift. Will you do that?”

“If you believe it is best.”

“I do. I mean, I do not  _want_  to, but you’re better off locked away in a castle with proper food and fire. Jon will need you, when your prince arrives.” Tormund kissed your hair and pulled back. “You chose me?”

“I chose you.” Your words were like iron and ice, your hand gripped around his. “I’m yours.”

Your nightmares were screams in the frozen landscape. In some, you were running in a field of white, frost closing around you, and then the dreadful blue eyes…

While Jon went immediately to Castle Black, Tormund stayed behind, helping to ferry his people from the ships to land. You felt the proper thing was to stay behind and watch over those that were left. None of the Free Folk approached you, but they did look at you, and you knew when they were talking about you amongst themselves. You nodded to them as they passed, but said nothing. Tormund came after you himself, climbing ropes, and gestured for you to come down into the rowboat.

“Don’t worry about them,” he told you, wiping sweat from his brow in spite of the bite in the air. “That’s another day’s concern.”

You nodded, a deep incline of your head. “You’re to leave immediately?”

“We’re not fuckin’ staying here, that’s for sure. We’ll go through those gates and out the other way and count our lucky fuckin’ days as we do it. I need you to make sure Snow does as he said he would and sends food on carts until we can gather and hunt.” Tormund reached for your hand and squeezed it. “Lady Dayne, Ambassador of the Free Folk.”

“Lady Sand.” Now you rolled your eyes, your lips curving at the corners. “You really must stop. Will you be warm enough without me?”

He cackled and leaned over his knees. “Not in the places I want to be, Raya.”

“Oh.” You let your eyes close and your lips remain parted. “I’ll miss this most of all, I think.”

“Then I didn’t do the job half so well as I should’ve.” He laughed again, but reached out and held your hand. “I love you.”

“I love you, as well.” You regarded him sadly as the boat was pulled ashore, then leaned the distance between you and kissed him. “I will give you all I’ve promised and more.”

“Aye, Raya.” Tormund pulled you onto dry land beside himself and looked at you as though his eyes were tracing your very existence. After a moment, he nodded once, then turned and left, walking towards his people, whose heads all turned to him. You stood and watched, tears collecting in your eyes, your hands clasped over your belly.

“My Lady?” A brother in black reached for your hand, to lead you back to the castle. You looked back and could not spot Tormund’s orange head in the masses.

Before the night ended, you heard the blowing of the horns. At first, you feared another attack on Castle Black, but no, this was a different signal altogether. With great haste, you got dressed again in the same fine dress and reached for your cloak. Upon reaching the yard, you saw Dolorous Edd and gently took his arm. “What has happened?”

“Riders approach the gates, looks a small army.” Edd pointed at the gathering of black-bedecked brothers who stood facing the great gates.

“What banners?” Your voice shook. “Where is King Stannis?”

“No one knows, m'lady. I’ve got to go. It would probably be better if you went back to your room and locked the doors.”

“I’ll do no such thing,” you said beneath your breath. Spotting Jon and Ghost, now, you picked up your skirts so that the slush could not ruin them and joined his side.

“I was waiting on you.” His voice dripped with sarcasm. “My scouts just told me…”

“I know who it is,” you whispered, willing your back rod-straight. The direwolf between you turned toward you with his lamp-like red eyes, taking in your scent.

“He won’t hurt you,” Jon said, still not looking your way. His gloved hand was starkly contrasted by his pet’s fur, scruffing at the ruff of his neck. “It’s your auntie, boy. Be kind.”

You could hear the sounds of hundreds of feet marching, now, and the snorting of dozens of horses. The gates creaked open, and you smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You can find this and a lot more at my tumblr, warmommy.tumblr.com!


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